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JSmith
Banned
Something new from the Axis of Time !
http://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Hamme...-3&keywords=john+birmingham#reader_B00AP2VRNW
Book Description
Publication Date:February 25, 2013
Alternate history master John Birmingham unleashes an astounding new installment in his Axis of Time series: an original eBook novella that begins when the future and the past collide.
The year is 1955, ten years after a battle fleet from 2021 exploded through a wormhole in space—straight into the Battle of Midway. A staggered, war-torn world catches its balance. Uptimers, with their extraordinary technology and strange styles, mingle with the real timers. Universities study the effects on the future. And men like Prince Harry of England find themselves playing pivotal roles in a history that has already happened.
Or has it?
In the starkly partitioned city of Rome, spies, killers, and mafia foot soldiers cross the dividing line between Allied and Russian Zones. Somewhere in the ancient, underground catacombs two men hunt for one another. One is Stalin’s personal assassin, the other a murderous, disillusioned acolyte of the Communist ideal, allied by fate and history with the OSS, MI6, and England’s swashbuckling Prince Harry. Harry’s own mission takes him to a glittering dinner party and a prize over which the two Russian killers are fighting—a factory owner with a terrifying secret. As the forces of West and East are locked in a stalemate, what this man knows could change everything: Josef Stalin, hiding in a Siberian bunker, is ready to hit the world with a thunderous blow.
-}
Ten years have passed since Admiral Kolhammer’s 21st century battlefleet was dragged into a wormhole and thrown across oceans of time, emerging with disastrous consequences and shattering the history of the Second World War.
Hitler and the Nazis have fallen, Kolhammer sits in the White House, but Stalin rules half of Europe and Asia. The great Soviet engines of state power turn and burn to ‘set history right’. Not just of the war, but of all future time.
In Rome with his lover Julia Duffy, an older, mellower Prince Harry is drawn into Stalin’s plans when a simple game of spies goes horribly wrong, while underneath the eternal city, former Spetsnaz officer Pavel Ivanov fights a running battle with the NKVDs executioner in chief as Stalin’s minions fight to preserve the secret of a weapon which could destroy the West with one, fearsome blow.
In Stalin's Hammer: Rome, the first of a series of ebooks, John Birmingham returns to the world he destroyed along with the US Fleet at Midway in Weapons of Choice.
April 13, 1955: central Siberia
Joseph Stalin knew he was being watched. He closed his eyes and adjusted the soft, red blanket that covered his legs, like a child hiding under his bed covers, thinking that if he could not see the monster, the monster could not see him. The sun was warm on his face, and bright, through his paper-thin eyelids. Sitting there in his wheelchair, his face turned up, eyes closed, it was possible to imagine the whole world was a pink, warm womb.
He let his chin slowly fall to his chest before opening his eyes and turning his glare on Beria. “We are delayed, Lavrenty Pavlovich. To what end?”
Stalin patted his pockets, looking for his old pipe, forgetting that he had not smoked in years. The doctors had said it would kill him. Frustrated at the delay, frustrated at the doctors, angry that he could not enjoy a simple pipe, his scowl grew darker. Once upon a time the hardest men in Russia had quailed at the sight of him playing with that pipe. To turn it this way and that, to stroke the bowl with his thumb while never moving to pack even one shred of tobacco in there – that was enough to signal his displeasure. Enough to make strong men quiver with fear. Now when he patted his pockets, he just looked like an old cripple, forgetful and failing.
Still, what little colour Beria had in his face leached away at the thunderous look on Stalin’s. That was something.
“No delay. There is no delay, comrade. Everything is running to schedule.”
The chief of the Functional Projects Bureau stammered over his last words and nervously checked the iPad he carried. A rare and valuable working model, an Apple original, one of the last before the ‘flex’ models debuted, and salvaged from the emergence of the British stealth destroyer way back in 1942, it was still sleeker and more powerful than anything Functional Projects had managed to produce. Then again, it was also vastly more elegant and powerful than any of the cheaper Samsung or Google flexipads they had also salvaged.
Stalin waved him off with a backhanded gesture. “Gah. Enough excuses, Lavrenty Pavlovich. Begin the demonstration. I have many days of travel to return to Moscow. Push your buttons. Bring down the sky. Be done with it.”
“The satellite is almost in position now,” Beria assured him. “We must retire inside.”
His bodyguard leaned forward. “Vozhd?” he asked, seeking permission to move him.
“Yes, yes,” said Stalin, who did not really want to give up his place in the sun. The winters grew longer as he grew older. He was certain of it. He enjoyed the mild spring weather, but soon enough, too soon, the leaves on the small stand of trees outside his apartment back in the Kremlin would turn red again, then gold, then brown as winter stalked back into the land. What did those books say? The ones his daughter loved, from the broken future. Winter was coming? His last perhaps. He adjusted the blanket again – an old habit, it had not moved – and tried to not let his disappointment show as his guard wheeled him off the terrace out of the sun and back inside the bunker.
He felt the chill as soon as they passed into the shadows of the deep concrete passageway. Solid iron blast doors rumbled behind him as the small party of high officials, bureaucrats and technicians filed in, trudging in procession to the bunker from which they would monitor the test. Moisture leaked from the thick concrete walls, giving Stalin pause to worry about his arthritis. He regretted having insisted on traveling all the way out here to witness the test firing for himself. Then he smiled. Beria undoubtedly regretted it more, and that was cause for some mild amusement. Stalin knew his deputy premier would be fretting now, squirming inside like a greasy little weasel, anxious that nothing should go wrong.
The tension in the control room was tangible. He could feel it on his skin, taste it even at the back of his mouth. It was a familiar taste, of a fine vintage. He had been supping on men’s fear for so long now he believed he could take some nourishment from it. The scientists and military officers – no, they were NKVD Spetsnaz; Beria’s thralls, not Red Army, he reminded himself – all did their best to avoid catching his gaze. Beria scuttled about, snapping and hissing at the technical staff, his spidery white fingers stabbing so hard at the screen of the iPad that Stalin thought he might punch it to the floor. That would be amusing.
His bodyguard – it was Yagi today – wheeled him past banks of computer terminals, monitoring screens, and control boards dense with flashing lights and illuminated buttons. The supreme leader of the Soviet Union understood none of it. The technology was all plundered from the far and impossible future, the world that could not be.
He would never see that particular future. He knew that, of course. Accepted it. Life ebbed away from him now – in spite of all the new “miracle” medical treatments and organ therapies, life itself retreated from Joseph Stalin on a quickening tide of years and minutes. But nobody else would see the future from whence Kolhammer and his international fleet had Emerged either, because he would not let it come to pass. He would not let it be, this false future where Putinist thugs and bandits ruled the Rodina, where the revolution was mocked and mourned. And dead.
It would not be.
At a word from him, as long as Beria had done his job, the sky would fall in on the world outside this bunker, and the real future would draw that much closer. Yagi brought him to a stop a few feet from the viewing port created especially for him. The armored glass was 7 inches thick, they had told him, and the reinforced concrete wall of the bunker at least 3 feet deep. Peering through this personal viewport was a little like looking down a short tunnel. The glass distorted the view somewhat, and gave it a dark green tinge. Steel shutters stood ready to slam down if needed, but he could not see them. Nobody could. Only a wheelchair-bound Stalin and one of the technicians, who was a dwarf, were of a height to have an unimpeded view through the port. Everybody else had to make do with the viewing screens. There were dozens of them about, but the two largest ones hung from the wall directly in front of him, above the viewing slit.
The room was chilly, because of all the infernal computers, which always seemed to be in danger of overheating. The cold, stale, recycled air irritated his eyes and seeped into his bones, but it awoke his senses, and he did want to see this. It was why he had traveled so far east, beyond the natural barrier of the mountains.
Involuntarily he glanced upwards, imagining American satellites prowling overhead, peering down on him. But there was only the low ceiling of unrendered cement. And above that – tons of rock.
“You are sure Kolhammer is not watching this on some television in the White House?” he growled at Beria. “They are always watching us.”
Startled out of some reverie, the NKVD boss jumped a little, and even squeaked. He was more nervous than usual. “We have done our best, our utmost, to draw their attention away from the proving grounds,” he said, stammering as before. “Ten Red Army divisions and fraternal bloc forces are exercising as close to the Oder as we dare. There have been incidents. I made sure of that personally. What satellite cover they do not have watching us there will be trained on Admiral Koniev’s newly unmasked fleet base. Our strategic forces are ready to test fire a fusion warhead to mask the geologic signal. This is all settled, Vozhd. By your very self.”
Stalin waved him away again, a stock gesture when dealing with Beria. He knew everything the man had just said, but he wanted him to repeat it. If Beria’s plan to mask the Hammer Fall test failed, Comrade Beria would pay the price. Not Stalin.
Klaxons and sirens began to sound all around them, and somewhere in the distance he heard the deep, bass rumble of more blast doors sliding into place. The countdown clock between the two large viewing screens clicked over to ten minutes.
In spite of his weariness and his age – he should have been dead two years now – in spite of all that he had done and seen, Joseph Stalin could not help but feel a flicker of excitement in his chest. Well, hopefully it was just excitement … After his last heart attack, the doctors had told him (or rather suggested, very mildly) that he might need to think about cutting back to one serving each day of his favorite lamb stew. He wiggled his fingers now, marveling at how old his hands looked, how skeletal and heavily veined.
1953, he thought.
These hands through which his blood still flowed, with which he could still touch the world, they should have clawed at the last moments of life in 1953. On March 5 – as a massive stroke shredded his brain and twisted his body into a crippled, piss-stained mess.
He smiled at the thought. He was still here. For now. Inside, he still felt like a twenty-year-old revolutionary, but his body was failing him. Even with his blood washed clean by a fresh, transplanted liver, even with improbably tiny machines regulating his heartbeat and sweeping toxins from his body, it was failing him. He should have been used to it, he supposed. So many had failed him over the decades. Their bodies, at least, he could pile up like cordwood. His own, he was stuck with, mostly, despite the efforts of his transplant surgeons and pharmacists.
The Vozhd had simply given too much to the struggle over the years. That was why he was so excited and intrigued by the possibilities of today’s test. Since the reactionary Kolhammer forces had Emerged from the Gordian knot of history at the Battle of Midway, Joseph Stalin had lived every day with the knowledge that he had limited time to set history right, to secure the revolution, and his place in it.
Emerged from history, and destroyed it, he thought. Destroyed the settled history of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century after that. It was still a wonder to him how nobody in the West could see the obvious truth of it. How the very impossibility of Admiral Kolhammer’s arrival from the year 2021 through this ‘wormhole’ spoke to the impossibility of the future from which he had come.
He grunted in frustration, setting off a momentary panic amongst his hangers-on, but he ignored them.
The forces of history operate like a machine, he thought, as technicians and dogsbodies fussed about him. History: driving human progress from barbarity to civilization, from the feudal to the capitalist, and then inevitably on to the final socialist stages. A history in which the USSR fell was simply not possible. Reality was not engineered in such a fashion. Thus history had righted itself with the destructive miracle of the Emergence.
Or rather, it had started to right itself. The revolutionary work of men was in the hands of men, of course. Stalin hoped that today they would come one crucial step closer to completing that work.
“Two minutes, Vozhd,” said Beria, surprising him.
Where had the time gone? Stalin shook his head, disgusted. He had been daydreaming again. He leaned forward to peer out through the armored glass. A nameless valley fell away from them hundreds of feet below, disappearing into the haze. Ten miles away, hundreds of obsolete tanks and trucks, many of them salvaged from the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War, waited on the valley floor. He was aware of increased tension behind him as the technicians hurried through their last-minute procedures. Literally – the last-minute procedures. The countdown clock had reached sixty seconds. Beria really had nothing to do, setting himself to annoy everyone with his pestering and interference as he did it.
“Leave them alone, Lavrenty Pavlovich!” Stalin ordered. “Let them do their duty.”
http://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Hamme...-3&keywords=john+birmingham#reader_B00AP2VRNW
Book Description
Publication Date:February 25, 2013
Alternate history master John Birmingham unleashes an astounding new installment in his Axis of Time series: an original eBook novella that begins when the future and the past collide.
The year is 1955, ten years after a battle fleet from 2021 exploded through a wormhole in space—straight into the Battle of Midway. A staggered, war-torn world catches its balance. Uptimers, with their extraordinary technology and strange styles, mingle with the real timers. Universities study the effects on the future. And men like Prince Harry of England find themselves playing pivotal roles in a history that has already happened.
Or has it?
In the starkly partitioned city of Rome, spies, killers, and mafia foot soldiers cross the dividing line between Allied and Russian Zones. Somewhere in the ancient, underground catacombs two men hunt for one another. One is Stalin’s personal assassin, the other a murderous, disillusioned acolyte of the Communist ideal, allied by fate and history with the OSS, MI6, and England’s swashbuckling Prince Harry. Harry’s own mission takes him to a glittering dinner party and a prize over which the two Russian killers are fighting—a factory owner with a terrifying secret. As the forces of West and East are locked in a stalemate, what this man knows could change everything: Josef Stalin, hiding in a Siberian bunker, is ready to hit the world with a thunderous blow.
-}
About Stalin’s Hammer: Rome
Ten years have passed since Admiral Kolhammer’s 21st century battlefleet was dragged into a wormhole and thrown across oceans of time, emerging with disastrous consequences and shattering the history of the Second World War.
Hitler and the Nazis have fallen, Kolhammer sits in the White House, but Stalin rules half of Europe and Asia. The great Soviet engines of state power turn and burn to ‘set history right’. Not just of the war, but of all future time.
In Rome with his lover Julia Duffy, an older, mellower Prince Harry is drawn into Stalin’s plans when a simple game of spies goes horribly wrong, while underneath the eternal city, former Spetsnaz officer Pavel Ivanov fights a running battle with the NKVDs executioner in chief as Stalin’s minions fight to preserve the secret of a weapon which could destroy the West with one, fearsome blow.
In Stalin's Hammer: Rome, the first of a series of ebooks, John Birmingham returns to the world he destroyed along with the US Fleet at Midway in Weapons of Choice.
Prologue
April 13, 1955: central Siberia
Joseph Stalin knew he was being watched. He closed his eyes and adjusted the soft, red blanket that covered his legs, like a child hiding under his bed covers, thinking that if he could not see the monster, the monster could not see him. The sun was warm on his face, and bright, through his paper-thin eyelids. Sitting there in his wheelchair, his face turned up, eyes closed, it was possible to imagine the whole world was a pink, warm womb.
He let his chin slowly fall to his chest before opening his eyes and turning his glare on Beria. “We are delayed, Lavrenty Pavlovich. To what end?”
Stalin patted his pockets, looking for his old pipe, forgetting that he had not smoked in years. The doctors had said it would kill him. Frustrated at the delay, frustrated at the doctors, angry that he could not enjoy a simple pipe, his scowl grew darker. Once upon a time the hardest men in Russia had quailed at the sight of him playing with that pipe. To turn it this way and that, to stroke the bowl with his thumb while never moving to pack even one shred of tobacco in there – that was enough to signal his displeasure. Enough to make strong men quiver with fear. Now when he patted his pockets, he just looked like an old cripple, forgetful and failing.
Still, what little colour Beria had in his face leached away at the thunderous look on Stalin’s. That was something.
“No delay. There is no delay, comrade. Everything is running to schedule.”
The chief of the Functional Projects Bureau stammered over his last words and nervously checked the iPad he carried. A rare and valuable working model, an Apple original, one of the last before the ‘flex’ models debuted, and salvaged from the emergence of the British stealth destroyer way back in 1942, it was still sleeker and more powerful than anything Functional Projects had managed to produce. Then again, it was also vastly more elegant and powerful than any of the cheaper Samsung or Google flexipads they had also salvaged.
Stalin waved him off with a backhanded gesture. “Gah. Enough excuses, Lavrenty Pavlovich. Begin the demonstration. I have many days of travel to return to Moscow. Push your buttons. Bring down the sky. Be done with it.”
“The satellite is almost in position now,” Beria assured him. “We must retire inside.”
His bodyguard leaned forward. “Vozhd?” he asked, seeking permission to move him.
“Yes, yes,” said Stalin, who did not really want to give up his place in the sun. The winters grew longer as he grew older. He was certain of it. He enjoyed the mild spring weather, but soon enough, too soon, the leaves on the small stand of trees outside his apartment back in the Kremlin would turn red again, then gold, then brown as winter stalked back into the land. What did those books say? The ones his daughter loved, from the broken future. Winter was coming? His last perhaps. He adjusted the blanket again – an old habit, it had not moved – and tried to not let his disappointment show as his guard wheeled him off the terrace out of the sun and back inside the bunker.
He felt the chill as soon as they passed into the shadows of the deep concrete passageway. Solid iron blast doors rumbled behind him as the small party of high officials, bureaucrats and technicians filed in, trudging in procession to the bunker from which they would monitor the test. Moisture leaked from the thick concrete walls, giving Stalin pause to worry about his arthritis. He regretted having insisted on traveling all the way out here to witness the test firing for himself. Then he smiled. Beria undoubtedly regretted it more, and that was cause for some mild amusement. Stalin knew his deputy premier would be fretting now, squirming inside like a greasy little weasel, anxious that nothing should go wrong.
The tension in the control room was tangible. He could feel it on his skin, taste it even at the back of his mouth. It was a familiar taste, of a fine vintage. He had been supping on men’s fear for so long now he believed he could take some nourishment from it. The scientists and military officers – no, they were NKVD Spetsnaz; Beria’s thralls, not Red Army, he reminded himself – all did their best to avoid catching his gaze. Beria scuttled about, snapping and hissing at the technical staff, his spidery white fingers stabbing so hard at the screen of the iPad that Stalin thought he might punch it to the floor. That would be amusing.
His bodyguard – it was Yagi today – wheeled him past banks of computer terminals, monitoring screens, and control boards dense with flashing lights and illuminated buttons. The supreme leader of the Soviet Union understood none of it. The technology was all plundered from the far and impossible future, the world that could not be.
He would never see that particular future. He knew that, of course. Accepted it. Life ebbed away from him now – in spite of all the new “miracle” medical treatments and organ therapies, life itself retreated from Joseph Stalin on a quickening tide of years and minutes. But nobody else would see the future from whence Kolhammer and his international fleet had Emerged either, because he would not let it come to pass. He would not let it be, this false future where Putinist thugs and bandits ruled the Rodina, where the revolution was mocked and mourned. And dead.
It would not be.
At a word from him, as long as Beria had done his job, the sky would fall in on the world outside this bunker, and the real future would draw that much closer. Yagi brought him to a stop a few feet from the viewing port created especially for him. The armored glass was 7 inches thick, they had told him, and the reinforced concrete wall of the bunker at least 3 feet deep. Peering through this personal viewport was a little like looking down a short tunnel. The glass distorted the view somewhat, and gave it a dark green tinge. Steel shutters stood ready to slam down if needed, but he could not see them. Nobody could. Only a wheelchair-bound Stalin and one of the technicians, who was a dwarf, were of a height to have an unimpeded view through the port. Everybody else had to make do with the viewing screens. There were dozens of them about, but the two largest ones hung from the wall directly in front of him, above the viewing slit.
The room was chilly, because of all the infernal computers, which always seemed to be in danger of overheating. The cold, stale, recycled air irritated his eyes and seeped into his bones, but it awoke his senses, and he did want to see this. It was why he had traveled so far east, beyond the natural barrier of the mountains.
Involuntarily he glanced upwards, imagining American satellites prowling overhead, peering down on him. But there was only the low ceiling of unrendered cement. And above that – tons of rock.
“You are sure Kolhammer is not watching this on some television in the White House?” he growled at Beria. “They are always watching us.”
Startled out of some reverie, the NKVD boss jumped a little, and even squeaked. He was more nervous than usual. “We have done our best, our utmost, to draw their attention away from the proving grounds,” he said, stammering as before. “Ten Red Army divisions and fraternal bloc forces are exercising as close to the Oder as we dare. There have been incidents. I made sure of that personally. What satellite cover they do not have watching us there will be trained on Admiral Koniev’s newly unmasked fleet base. Our strategic forces are ready to test fire a fusion warhead to mask the geologic signal. This is all settled, Vozhd. By your very self.”
Stalin waved him away again, a stock gesture when dealing with Beria. He knew everything the man had just said, but he wanted him to repeat it. If Beria’s plan to mask the Hammer Fall test failed, Comrade Beria would pay the price. Not Stalin.
Klaxons and sirens began to sound all around them, and somewhere in the distance he heard the deep, bass rumble of more blast doors sliding into place. The countdown clock between the two large viewing screens clicked over to ten minutes.
In spite of his weariness and his age – he should have been dead two years now – in spite of all that he had done and seen, Joseph Stalin could not help but feel a flicker of excitement in his chest. Well, hopefully it was just excitement … After his last heart attack, the doctors had told him (or rather suggested, very mildly) that he might need to think about cutting back to one serving each day of his favorite lamb stew. He wiggled his fingers now, marveling at how old his hands looked, how skeletal and heavily veined.
1953, he thought.
These hands through which his blood still flowed, with which he could still touch the world, they should have clawed at the last moments of life in 1953. On March 5 – as a massive stroke shredded his brain and twisted his body into a crippled, piss-stained mess.
He smiled at the thought. He was still here. For now. Inside, he still felt like a twenty-year-old revolutionary, but his body was failing him. Even with his blood washed clean by a fresh, transplanted liver, even with improbably tiny machines regulating his heartbeat and sweeping toxins from his body, it was failing him. He should have been used to it, he supposed. So many had failed him over the decades. Their bodies, at least, he could pile up like cordwood. His own, he was stuck with, mostly, despite the efforts of his transplant surgeons and pharmacists.
The Vozhd had simply given too much to the struggle over the years. That was why he was so excited and intrigued by the possibilities of today’s test. Since the reactionary Kolhammer forces had Emerged from the Gordian knot of history at the Battle of Midway, Joseph Stalin had lived every day with the knowledge that he had limited time to set history right, to secure the revolution, and his place in it.
Emerged from history, and destroyed it, he thought. Destroyed the settled history of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century after that. It was still a wonder to him how nobody in the West could see the obvious truth of it. How the very impossibility of Admiral Kolhammer’s arrival from the year 2021 through this ‘wormhole’ spoke to the impossibility of the future from which he had come.
He grunted in frustration, setting off a momentary panic amongst his hangers-on, but he ignored them.
The forces of history operate like a machine, he thought, as technicians and dogsbodies fussed about him. History: driving human progress from barbarity to civilization, from the feudal to the capitalist, and then inevitably on to the final socialist stages. A history in which the USSR fell was simply not possible. Reality was not engineered in such a fashion. Thus history had righted itself with the destructive miracle of the Emergence.
Or rather, it had started to right itself. The revolutionary work of men was in the hands of men, of course. Stalin hoped that today they would come one crucial step closer to completing that work.
“Two minutes, Vozhd,” said Beria, surprising him.
Where had the time gone? Stalin shook his head, disgusted. He had been daydreaming again. He leaned forward to peer out through the armored glass. A nameless valley fell away from them hundreds of feet below, disappearing into the haze. Ten miles away, hundreds of obsolete tanks and trucks, many of them salvaged from the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War, waited on the valley floor. He was aware of increased tension behind him as the technicians hurried through their last-minute procedures. Literally – the last-minute procedures. The countdown clock had reached sixty seconds. Beria really had nothing to do, setting himself to annoy everyone with his pestering and interference as he did it.
“Leave them alone, Lavrenty Pavlovich!” Stalin ordered. “Let them do their duty.”
JSmith
Banned
Another one from John Birmingham
http://www.amazon.com/A-Captain-Gate-ebook/dp/B005WLQ7Y0/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t#reader_B005WLQ7Y0
Book Description
Publication Date:November 1, 2011
A ′What if′ story of the Cold War ... a small piece of alternate history of the period told via a biography of one of its players, Lieutenant Branch McKinnon, an adventurer in a different post-WWII world of American isolationism.
This alternate history from a very popular and bestselling Australian writer gives the reader a different perspective on history and where we are now!
}
PROLOGUE
Branch McKinnon exhaled, and with the hot, stale breath, went some of the tension cramping his arms and shoulders. Not that he relaxed. That would have been impossible. But as he saw the end coming, with no chance of escape or redemption, he accepted it for the first time, and some of the fear and the strain of the last few weeks ebbed away.
He waited. The muzzle of his Thompson gun tracked the small group of North Koreans as they cautiously rounded the huge mound of burning rubble at the end of the street. It had been a seafood warehouse, and the stench of burned and rotting fish guts was vile enough to blot out the smells of the harbour city as it died around him. Spoiled meat, slumping piles of garbage alive with carpets of black flies, the unwashed bodies of his platoon, napalm smoke and festering wounds; the evil stink of the warehouse blotted them all out.
Pusan was dying. The little port city that had held out for so long would be overrun, probably in the next few hours, and his small band of brothers was sure to die with her. He was aware, without turning to look at them, of his men in the firing pit next to him. Nate Lundquist was hunkered down over the platoon’s thirty cal. Jimbo Jamieson held a belt of shiny cartridges off the rubble and ash. He had another two boxes of ammo and, most precious of all, a spare barrel ready to go. Never taking his eyes off the enemy as they crept closer, he could still sense the rest of the guys. A patch of red hair peeking out beneath the curve of a helmet. The unnaturally straight line of a bayonet. A muted cough in the next foxhole, barely audible under the freight train scream of sixteen-inch shells arcing overhead. As long as they’d had the Navy at their backs McKinnon had felt there might be a small chance of surviving. But even the brightest optimist couldn’t ignore how thin the cover from the big guns had grown.
Word was, two of the battlewagons had been sunk in the last six hours. McKinnon had heard more than a dozen different rumours as to how, but he paid none of them a scrap of notice. All that mattered was the stone cold reality of those Koreans, or maybe Chinese, down the end of the street. Even yesterday they’d have been blown to pieces miles away from the edge of town. Now they were right in the heart of it. The docks, where the promised evac had descended into an unholy clusterfuck, were only two miles away. Thousands of people were trapped down there — Americans, Koreans, soldiers and civilians — none of them willing to wait anymore. When the captain had detailed Branch and his men as a rearguard he’d given it to them straight. Everything had gone to shit. Friendlies had turned their guns on each other. ROK forces had shot down women and children to clear a path to the barges for themselves. Marines, our marines, had poured fire on them in turn. It was, said the captain, an unmitigated horror. But what choice did they have? As long as they held the docks, they at least had to try and get some people away. They had to try.
http://www.amazon.com/A-Captain-Gate-ebook/dp/B005WLQ7Y0/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t#reader_B005WLQ7Y0
Book Description
Publication Date:November 1, 2011
A ′What if′ story of the Cold War ... a small piece of alternate history of the period told via a biography of one of its players, Lieutenant Branch McKinnon, an adventurer in a different post-WWII world of American isolationism.
This alternate history from a very popular and bestselling Australian writer gives the reader a different perspective on history and where we are now!
}
Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate, ‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods?’
Thomas Babington, first Baron Macauley.
PROLOGUE
Branch McKinnon exhaled, and with the hot, stale breath, went some of the tension cramping his arms and shoulders. Not that he relaxed. That would have been impossible. But as he saw the end coming, with no chance of escape or redemption, he accepted it for the first time, and some of the fear and the strain of the last few weeks ebbed away.
He waited. The muzzle of his Thompson gun tracked the small group of North Koreans as they cautiously rounded the huge mound of burning rubble at the end of the street. It had been a seafood warehouse, and the stench of burned and rotting fish guts was vile enough to blot out the smells of the harbour city as it died around him. Spoiled meat, slumping piles of garbage alive with carpets of black flies, the unwashed bodies of his platoon, napalm smoke and festering wounds; the evil stink of the warehouse blotted them all out.
Pusan was dying. The little port city that had held out for so long would be overrun, probably in the next few hours, and his small band of brothers was sure to die with her. He was aware, without turning to look at them, of his men in the firing pit next to him. Nate Lundquist was hunkered down over the platoon’s thirty cal. Jimbo Jamieson held a belt of shiny cartridges off the rubble and ash. He had another two boxes of ammo and, most precious of all, a spare barrel ready to go. Never taking his eyes off the enemy as they crept closer, he could still sense the rest of the guys. A patch of red hair peeking out beneath the curve of a helmet. The unnaturally straight line of a bayonet. A muted cough in the next foxhole, barely audible under the freight train scream of sixteen-inch shells arcing overhead. As long as they’d had the Navy at their backs McKinnon had felt there might be a small chance of surviving. But even the brightest optimist couldn’t ignore how thin the cover from the big guns had grown.
Word was, two of the battlewagons had been sunk in the last six hours. McKinnon had heard more than a dozen different rumours as to how, but he paid none of them a scrap of notice. All that mattered was the stone cold reality of those Koreans, or maybe Chinese, down the end of the street. Even yesterday they’d have been blown to pieces miles away from the edge of town. Now they were right in the heart of it. The docks, where the promised evac had descended into an unholy clusterfuck, were only two miles away. Thousands of people were trapped down there — Americans, Koreans, soldiers and civilians — none of them willing to wait anymore. When the captain had detailed Branch and his men as a rearguard he’d given it to them straight. Everything had gone to shit. Friendlies had turned their guns on each other. ROK forces had shot down women and children to clear a path to the barges for themselves. Marines, our marines, had poured fire on them in turn. It was, said the captain, an unmitigated horror. But what choice did they have? As long as they held the docks, they at least had to try and get some people away. They had to try.
JSmith
Banned
http://www.amazon.com/Invasion-Alas...p/B006KHGWAO/ref=pd_sim_b_1#reader_B006KHGWAO
Book Description
Publication Date:December 9, 2011
The invasion of Alaska has begun. And the Third World War may not be far behind.
In this controversial book, Vaughn Heppner explores the theme of a shattered America facing the onslaught of the new colossus in the East: Greater China.
The time is 2032, and the Chinese are crossing the polar ice and steaming through the Gulf of Alaska. They have conquered oil-rich Siberia and turned Japan into a satellite state. Now a new glacial period has begun, devastating the world’s food supply. China plans to corner the world’s oil market and buy the needed food for their hungry masses.
A weakened America uses old technology against the next generation of military hardware. The invasion unleashes the Hell of battle as two armies turn the snowfields of Alaska red with blood.
INVASION: ALASKA is a thundering techno-thriller of vast scope, written by bestselling author Vaughn Heppner.
Invasion: Alaska
(Invasion America Series)
by Vaughn Heppner
“China? There lies a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.”
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
Copyright © 2011 by the author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
Timeline to War
1997: The British return Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China.
2011: China reviews its one-child per family policy begun in 1978 and decides to continue it. This increasingly creates an imbalance of boys, as families abort a higher percentage of girls.
2012: China carries much of the U.S. National Debt and continues to sell America a vast surplus of finished goods.
2015: Decreasing European and Russian population trends continue. Birthrates have plummeted well below replacement values, resulting in a shrinking number of Frenchmen, Germans, Finns and Russians.
2016: The American banking system and stock market crashes as the Chinese unload their U.S. Bonds. The ripple effect creates the Sovereign Debt Depression throughout the world.
2017: Siberia secedes from a bankrupt Russia.
2018: Scientists detect the beginning of a new glacial period that is similar to the chilly temperatures that occurred during the Black Death in the Middle Ages.
2019: The Marriage Act is passed. As the Chinese men greatly outnumber the women, special government permits are needed before a man is allowed to marry a woman.
2020: Due to new glaciation, there are repeated low yields and crop failures in China and elsewhere. It brings severe political unrest to an already economically destabilized world.
2021: An expansion-minded Socialist-Nationalist government emerges in China. It demands that Siberia return the Great Northeastern Area stolen during Tsarist times. It also calls for a reunification with Taiwan.
2022: The Sovereign Debt Depression—and an ongoing civil war in Mexico—creates political turmoil in America, particularly in the Southwest. There is an increase in terrorism, secessionist movements and a plummeting Federal budget. All American military forces return home to the U.S.
2023: The Mukden Incident sparks the Sino-Siberian War. Chinese armies invade. The ailing Russian government ignores Siberian cries for military aid. America’s new isolationism prevents any overseas interference.
2023: Modernized equipment and an excessive pool of recruits eager to win marriage permits bring swift victory to Chinese arms over Siberia. It annexes the Great Northeastern Area. Siberia becomes a client state.
2024: Aggressive posturing and long-range aircraft stationed on the Chinese coast cause the aging U.S. Fleet to retreat from Taiwan. China invades and captures Taiwan. Its navy now rivals the shrunken USN.
2026: Newly discovered deep oilfields in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska prove among the world’s largest.
2027: The civil war in Mexico worsens. The bulk of America’s Homeland Security Forces now stand guard on the Rio Grande.
2028: The continuing modernization of the oil industry in Siberia, the Great Northeastern Area and in the South China Sea turns Greater China into the largest oil-producing nation in the world. China begins to dictate OPEC policies.
2030: The cooling trend worsens, bringing record winter temperatures. New energy sources cannot keep pace with increasing demand. American energy hunger sweeps away the last environmental concerns. All possible energy sources are exploited.
2031: Harsher weather patterns and growing world population causes greater food rationing in more countries. The main grain exporting nations—Canada, America, Argentina and Australia—form a union along similar lines as OPEC. China warns it may cut America off from all oil supplies unless it is given priority status for grain shipments.
2032: China experiences the worst rice harvest of the Twenty-first century. New rationing laws are instituted. Internal unrest rises to dangerous levels as Party officials seek new food sources.
-1-
Upheaval
PRCN PAO FENG
I do not belong in this submarine, Commando First Rank Ru thought to himself. He sat on a metal bench inside the nuclear attack submarine Pao Feng. It was the quietest boat in the Chinese Fleet, and it was less than sixty kilometers from coastal Los Angeles.
Three other Bai Hu Tezhongbing—White Tiger Commandos—sat on the benches beside Ru. They were a stern-faced Underwater Demolition Team, an elite group of combat divers. Ru had the unfortunate privilege of being hailed as the best combat diver in Greater China. It was the reason the government had revoked his exemption and returned him to active service with this UDT.
The deckplates vibrated under his feet as a water droplet condensed on a pipe above. The droplet fell near his flippers, which were stacked against his bundle of CHKR-57 high explosives. Red light bathed the Commandos, and the softest of lurches told Ru that the submarine had begun to rise.
This tightened his stomach. He did not belong here. He had already served his time.
Ru’s eyes narrowed. He was an athletic man with compact muscles and thick wrists. His face was unremarkable, save that it was flatter than average and indicated Vietnamese heritage. That was a taint in the Socialist-Nationalist China of 2032, but he had proven himself in Taiwan and seldom had to worry about such things now.
There was a soft click to his left. Ru and the other three Commandos looked up as a flat computer-scroll flickered with life. The face of the submarine captain filled the scroll. He wore a white officer’s hat, had narrow features and sucked on a cigarette stub. A thin ribbon of smoke curled from the stub and drifted before the captain’s eyes. His had the eerie deadliness of a hammerhead shark. Behind him, a sailor moved to a different station.
“We are approaching the designated area,” the captain said. He had a raspy voice and he was known for his strict discipline. “I wish you men luck.” Nicotine-stained fingertips plucked the cigarette from his mouth as on-scroll he leaned toward them. “First Rank Ru, I am grateful that you came out of retirement to lead the assault. Your patriotism humbles us. You are a true Chinese fighter and I salute you.”
Mashing the cigarette into an unseen ashtray, the captain saluted. A second later, the computer-scroll went blank.
The four Commandos lurched to their feet. As they did, Ru became aware of Soldier Rank Kwan’s stare. Ru glanced at the man, the largest among them and thickly muscled from too much time on the weight machines. Kwan had a mustache and dark skin like a Turk of the outer provinces.
“Your patriotism humbles us all,” Kwan said.
The others nodded or mumbled agreement. Maybe only Ru heard the bite in Kwan’s words. In the red glow of the compartment their eyes locked, and Ru understood that Kwan knew his secret.
Like the others, Ru wore a wetsuit and a web-belt with a combat knife and a TOZ-2 underwater pistol attached. He now lifted the rebreather that rested against his high explosives and shouldered it onto his back. After securing the rebreather, he attached the high explosives to his chest, settling the CHKR-57 so it wouldn’t restrict his breathing.
“I know your patriotism is as strong as mine,” Ru said. “What I ask now is that you each remember your training.” They had been brought together a mere four weeks ago, intensely rehearsing their attack ever since. Ru was surprised he spoke with such confidence. The fact he did so made him glad. Maybe Soldier Rank Kwan understood his secret anger, but it would be better if the others didn’t realize.
Ru inhaled, tasting the boat’s oil-tainted air. He had forgotten how narrow a submarine’s compartments and passageways could be. He forced himself to grin and to glance at each of the White Tigers in turn. Each was younger than him, most by nine years. None was married and none had sisters because there was only one child per family—the one child per family policy being law, one of Greater China’s most strictly enforced.
“After this,” Ru said, “after we are successful, each of you shall win marriage permits. So I hope each of you has a chosen girl to pursue back home.”
The others stared at him, their features expressionless. These younger men coming out of the training camps were different than those Ru had known when he’d first joined. These men seemed more puritanical, almost like the Shaolin monks of the history books.
Soldier Rank Kwan spoke up. “We do this for the honor of China.”
Not wanting to get into an argument over it, Ru began to don his full-face diving mask. It was bigger than an ordinary sport mask. As the name implied, the full-face mask covered his entire face, protecting it from cold water and from possible pollution. Because his lips were free, he could talk inside the mask. Sometimes they used modulated ultrasound comm-units for talking to each other underwater. Today, they would use speaker units, but only for talking above the water. They didn’t want to use the ultrasound and risk having the Americans pick up their voices. Ru appreciated full-face masks because he no longer had to clench a mouthpiece. That made a difference during a long-distance swim.
He fastened several straps around his head. Then he clicked the set/air valve, breathing the submarine’s atmosphere. The switch was on the mask but out of the way, so he wouldn’t accidentally bump it during the dive. The rest of the mask was smooth around his face and head. That would keep it from brushing against something underwater and dislodging it—a flooded full-face mask was harder to clear of water than an ordinary sport mask.
The mask’s window or faceplate was a modern polymer instead of glass. Because the inside of the faceplate could become fogged during a dive, Ru’s mask had a special design feature: whenever he breathed, the inflow of air blew over the polymer. That air evaporated any mist on the inner faceplate, giving Ru clear sight.
With his rebreather hooked to the fitted mask, Ru moved past Kwan and the others. He squeezed through the hatch into the airlock chamber. He carried ninety pounds of CHKR-57 explosive. Another White Tiger followed him into the airlock, making it a tight fit. Ru pressed a button, and the chamber rotated, sealing them within.
In seconds, cold saltwater gurgled around their ankles. It rose quickly, reaching their thighs, their waist, and heading up for their chest. Ru half-turned from his partner. As the water swirled around him, he raised his right hand and touched a plastic pouch secured to the strap crossing his left pectoral. Curled within the pouch was a photograph of his pregnant wife, Lu May. Ru’s fingertips rested on the hidden photograph. Reflexively, his teeth ground together as the muscles that hinged his jaws tightened.
I should be in my favorite chair in our apartment in Shanghai. I should be listening to my wife sing lullabies to our unborn daughter.
Ru leaned his head against the chamber’s wall. The unfairness of this seethed within him. He had served his time and had risked his life for the State in order to earn the fabulous reward of marriage. Now he was supposed to enjoy marital bliss, not risk his hard-won happiness in order to harm Americans.
Years ago, he had become a White Tiger for a reason, and that reason wasn’t patriotism. It was because of Lu May, the only one for him. Since puberty, Ru had longed for her. He had never used a prostitute as many men did these days. Prostitutes were far too expensive and he found the idea repulsive. The first time he lay with a woman, he’d vowed, it would be Lu May—and he would never lay with another. He believed a woman was meant for one man alone. In trade school during his teens, he had thought it out carefully. At seventeen, he’d volunteered for the Army, passed the rigorous physical and mental tests, and gained admittance to the famed White Tigers. They were the elite Special Forces of China and considered the fastest way for a man to earn marriage rights, not to mention one of the few ways for a Chinese man to gain such rights while he was still in his twenties. The only trick was remaining alive throughout the hazardous duty.
Much to his disgust, Ru had still been in training when the war with Siberia started and ended. Fortunately, the war with Taiwan occurred a year and a half later. Ru had gone in with the second-wave UDT-attack into Taipei Harbor. Each White Tiger had carried a limpet mine, named for a type of mollusk. By activating powerful magnets, each diver was to attach his mine to an enemy hull and then swim to safety; a ticking fuse would blow the mine shortly thereafter. Every member of the first wave had died. Every member of Ru’s team had died too…except for him.
Soldier Rank Kwan’s favorite cousin, Mengyao, had been Ru’s best friend then. Mengyao had died in Taipei Harbor, and Ru was certain Soldier Rank Kwan blamed him for surviving. Second cousins were rare and therefore cherished in China.
Ru’s limpet mine had destroyed the Light Cruiser Quicken. He still had nightmares of that time. Both his eardrums had burst and he still experienced nosebleeds much too easily. The government had publicly hailed his performance. Not only had he gained the Medal of Excellence for the successful assault, but he’d also won a coveted marriage permit, a jiehunzheng. He had been paraded on TV as a Hero of the People.
That had been eight years ago. It had taken three of those years to woo Lu May. A woman in China had many suitors. Many richer men had sought out Lu May, a beauty, a rare and wonderful prize. In the end, she had chosen him, although he was only a First Rank Commando.
In the submarine’s diving chamber, the cold saltwater surrounded Ru. A clang sounded. Reaching up, Ru turned the wheel until he heard a click. He pushed, and the hatch opened into the Pacific Ocean one hundred meters below the surface.
Kicking his fins, Ru swam through the hatch. Even after years of training, this was an eerie experience. The attack submarine was the only visible thing in the darkness. Lights shined on the hull, allowing enough visibility to see the numbers painted below his fins.
First checking to see that his partner followed, Ru headed toward the bow. He kicked smoothly, expertly using his muscles to propel himself through the murky underworld. The trick was to relax, to pretend he was a shark or a barracuda. Soldier Rank Kwan was bigger, stronger and tougher, but none of his men was a better swimmer. It had been the key to Ru’s success.
The submarine’s hull shuddered and a mass of bubbles rose ahead of him. Ru slowed. He was near the bow, by the torpedo tubes. The captain ejected a T-9 SDV, or Swimmer Delivery Vehicle. It was torpedo-shaped, made of ceramic-plate so it had a negligible radar signature, and ran on Japanese batteries. There was a cage around the propeller so none of the White Tigers could accidentally cut themselves on it. Hydroplanes would guide the vehicle.
Ru kicked his fins, moving away from the submarine so the yawning darkness of the deep spread out below him. The SDV floated in the murk at neutral buoyancy, with an emitter guiding Ru to it. Soon, he was straddling the T-9. What looked like a small motorcycle-screen protected the controls and compass. Through his thighs, he felt the other White Tiger securing himself to the saddle-seat behind him. Ru switched on the power, and green lights blinked into life. He checked the panel. A red light appeared—the other T-9 was ready.
Ru fed power to the propeller and adjusted the T-9’s hydroplanes. He moved away from the submarine and toward the Californian coast almost sixty kilometers away. The vehicle’s vibration was slight and water rushed against him, as he was only partially protected by the forward screen.
Ru twisted back. The Commando seated behind him leaned out of the way. Farther behind followed Kwan and his partner on their T-9. Nodding, Ru faced forward as he felt the rush of water against his chest. He peered about the dark world, with millions of tons of water surrounding him. It was nearly silent with his rebreather and full-face mask. Even with a man right behind him, he felt terribly alone in the vast Pacific Ocean.
This was possibly the longest distance combat swim in Chinese history. It would have been impossible without rebreathers. They were a marvel of marine technology and were a closed-circuit scuba, almost akin to a space suit’s tanks. As a person breathed, his lungs used-up oxygen and created carbon dioxide as waste gas. With open-circuit scuba or the familiar aqua-lung, a diver only used some of the oxygen in each of his breaths. He breathed out unused oxygen together with nitrogen and carbon dioxide waste, blowing the bubbles of gas into the surrounding water. That meant oxygen escaped that he could have used, and it meant he needed to carry extra diving cylinders.
The rebreather, on the other hand, re-circulated the exhaled gas for re-use. It did not discharge the unused oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide waste into the water as bubbles. Instead, the rebreather absorbed the carbon dioxide by scrubbing it. The rebreather also added oxygen to replace the consumed gas. Because of this, a diver only needed a fraction of the gas he would have used in an open-circuit system. Ultimately, what it meant was that he needed to carry fewer cylinders on his back.
The rewards of using a rebreather were many. Because a diver needed less gas, he could swim longer at one time and go deeper. And, during an ascent, rebreathers produced no bubbles, which could give away a diver’s position while swimming in enemy territory. Bubbles also created noise, making it harder to listen as closely. Further, the rebreather minimized the amount of inert gases in the mix and therefore minimized the decompression needed later, reducing the likelihood of getting the bends.
There were other rewards, too. In an open-circuit cylinder, the cold breathable gas became uncomfortable over time and caused dehydration. The rebreather air was warmer and moister. Lastly, as a regular scuba diver inhaled, the expanding gas entering his lungs caused him to rise slightly and then lower as he breathed out. He lost his neutral buoyancy. In a rebreather, this occurred less.
Keeping a constant speed on the T-9 and straining to see in the darkness, Ru endured the lonely voyage. He understood the mission’s parameters. The Siberian oilfields under China’s control, combined with offshore drilling and domestic production, had turned her into the largest oil-producing nation in the world. China had more than enough energy, but with her teeming population, she lacked enough food. Despite her superpower status, stiff rationing was practiced throughout the country. Ru had listened to lectures concerning the return of a small ice age and harsher weather patterns, but he’d usually fallen into a daze during them. Crop yields were down all over the world, although a few southern countries had increased food exports. America was the leader of the new Grain Union of Canada, Argentina, Australia and others, and China demanded preferred status. Her chief bargaining chip was oil, the limited resource that still ran much of the world’s industries and the majority of the transportation systems.
America had grain and China needed more. The Party leaders would do whatever they had to in order to feed China’s hordes. Ru shook his head in disgust. Grain. Oil. What else did he need to know other than the government had lied to him? Men with marriage permits were supposed to be exempt from frontline service. They had told him he was the best frogman and China now desperately needed her favored son to save the nation in this bleak hour.
Ru wanted to curse. Instead, he checked the instruments. Then he brought the T-9 toward the surface. He had been doing so slowly throughout the voyage. Even with rebreathers, their bodies needed time to adjust to the nitrogen levels in their bloodstreams.
Finally, Ru’s masked head broke the surface—and then his body—as the T-9 moved through the ocean like a fast-floating log. He switched the set/air valve and breathed the cold atmosphere around him. With a flick of his fingers, he shut down the caged propeller so they glided to a halt.
The torpedo-shaped vehicle soon rode a mighty swell. The mass of water hissed around him, while the stars glittered above in amazing profusion. After a week underwater in the submarine, the stars were a glorious sight. In Shanghai, Lu May and he liked to walk in the park at night gazing at the constellations.
A pang squeezed Ru’s chest. He had the terrible feeling that he would never see his wife again. His wife would remarry. A Chinese woman had no choice about that. If his unborn daughter wasn’t aborted first, she would gain a stepfather and she would never know he’d existed.
Ru tried to control his anguish. He was the best frogman in China. He would survive and he would return to Shanghai. In several weeks, he would hold Lu May and shower her face with kisses.
Ru shifted in his saddle-seat as Soldier Rank Kwan slowly drove his T-9 near.
A big ocean swell passed underneath him and Ru’s T-9 sank into a watery trough. Another swell barreled toward him, with tiny phosphorescent plankton glowing like ghosts in the water. It was so peaceful here, almost surreal. Yet he had come to attach explosives to an oil platform.
The Americans had sonar and radar on their oil platforms. Secessionist terrorists had attempted sabotage on various oil rigs in the past. Security details now accompanied the deep-sea workmen. It was the reason the attack submarine had released the White Tigers so far from target. It was why they used ceramic-plate T-9s, and it was the reason they would swim the rest of the way. No one must ever realize that Chinese soldiers had attacked Americans.
By hand, Ru signaled Kwan. They hadn’t attached any communication wires to each other yet, nor did Ru use his mask’s speaker. He liked the silence and the four of them knew what to do.
Shutting down his T-9, Ru set the timer to the directional emitter. If they were to survive the combat swim, they would have to return and find the T-9s. He switched the set/air valve back, tasting the rebreather’s warm mixture again, and slid into the water.
The four of them shoved and dragged the vehicles beside each other, using clamps and lines to attach them. When they were finished, the others gathered around Ru.
Kwan held up his hand. Ru frowned. Kwan pointed north. Ru heard a motorboat then. At this distance, he didn’t know how big the boat was or who it belonged to. They watched, seeing lights. The motorboat headed west. Had someone spotted the submarine? That was bad, but there was nothing they could do about it now.
Ru pulled out his compass. The others knew what it meant. They must continue with the operation. Ru submerged and reentered the dark waters, a human seal in the womb of the endless sea. After riding for so long, it felt good to use his thighs. Ru kicked in a steady rhythm, propelling himself to the target. Every time he glanced back, he saw the other White Tigers following, their faceplates aimed at him. He glanced several times into Kwan’s hard eyes. That tightened the muscles in Kwan’s face.
The White Tiger Commandos were unique to the Socialist-Nationalist government ruling China. That government had risen to power in 2021 under the present Chairman. The White Tigers had been the first to implement the new enlisted rankings. They had dispensed with the old order of private, corporal and sergeant. Instead, it went Fighter Rank, Soldier Rank and First Rank. After several years, the Chinese Army, Navy and National Militia had incorporated the new enlisted rankings. In everything military, the Bai Hu led the way.
Many kilometers later, Ru’s head and shoulders broke out of the water. Like sea otters, the others soon surfaced around him. Ru pointed. There in the distance was the giant oil platform, with its bright lights shining in the night. The Americans had built it several years ago. According to the briefing, it had taken a special act of Congress and fierce debates among the environmentalists of the country. The Americans needed oil, and they were breaking long-held taboos to acquire it wherever they could. The new platform was supposed to be the first of many in the Californian coastal region.
Ru took out his binoculars, which could switch to infrared scan. A dark chopper swooped around the platform, and he spotted a patrol boat. The Americans took security seriously, and the oil companies used reliable Blacksand mercenaries for the job.
First signaling to the others, Ru submerged once more. It was a long swim. He heard the motor first as a tiny sound. The sound grew as he neared the giant oil rig. According to his briefing, the patrol boats carried armed mercenaries and heavy machine guns. In addition, the patrol boats were equipped with APS radar. Normally it was used as a fish-finder, but for a short distance, it could detect swimmers.
Ru headed down into the darkness: down, down, down. Flicking on a heel-light, Ru looked back. Other heel-lights appeared, three of them. With a nod, Ru resumed his dive. The temperature became steadily colder. Even after years of training, this was an uneasy experience, the knowledge that hired killers patrolled above, seeking to find and destroy him.
Ru and the others carried high explosives, and they each had a TOZ-2 underwater pistol, which was similar in design to the SPP-1 pistol developed in the old USSR. Ordinary-shaped bullets were inaccurate underwater and extremely short-ranged. Therefore, their pistols fired a round-based 4.5mm steel dart 115mm long. Each dart weighted 12.8 grams, and each dart had a longer range and greater penetrating power than a speargun’s spear.
The TOZ-2 had four barrels, each holding one cartridge. None of the barrels was rifled. Each dart was kept in line by hydrodynamic effects, meaning that the TOZ-2 was inaccurate when fired out of the water. The deeper one dove, the less range their pistols had. The effective range out of water was fifty to sixty-six feet. In water twenty feet deep, a steel dart could kill at one hundred and thirty feet. In water fifty-six feet deep, the steel dart’s range shrank to sixteen feet.
By using his compass and rangefinder, Ru unerringly reached the oil rig. He switched on a lamp and used the light to scan the darkness. A wahoo darted before him, a scombrid fish like mackerel or tuna. Fish densities around an oil or gas platform were twenty to fifty times higher than the open water. It told Ru he was near. Then a great stanchion appeared. Although the oil rig was new, the stanchion was already encrusted with sea-growth.
Using a depth-gauge, Ru adjusted his range and used his combat knife to scrap and pry away marine-growth from the metal stanchion. Each time the blade touched, he heard a click and a scraping sound. Once he had a big enough area, Ru slipped the CHKR-57 from his chest and secured it to the stanchion. Finished, he set the timer.
They did this four times, the others securing their explosives to different stanchions.
Ru grinned. He imagined that even Kwan could manage a soft smile of victory for their success. They swam away, keeping at this deep level but heading for the rendezvous point. It was easier swimming without the explosives. Now Ru merely had to find the T-9s and then the submarine. Afterward, he would be on his way home to Shanghai and Lu May.
The sound of the American patrol boat dwindled. When all he could hear was the sound of his breathing, Ru slowly surfaced. He used his compass and rangefinder, and in time, he turned on the directional device. He waited, watching. There—a pulse from the T-9’s emitter showed on his tiny screen. With joy in his heart, Ru swam near the surface all the way there.
Soon, the four Commandos unclamped the T-9s, climbed onto the saddle-seats, and started up the propellers. The T-9s sped into the Pacific Ocean for the rendezvous point with the Pao Feng.
This time they remained on the surface, riding over the swells. The kilometers dropped away as Ru followed the compass toward the chosen heading. He was going to see Lu May again. He would see his baby girl being born and watch her grow into a fine young woman. Surely after this, the military could not ask more from him.
Lost in his thoughts, Ru was surprised as his partner dug a knuckle in his back. It took a moment as Ru turned on the speaking unit attached to his mask.
“Wei?” he shouted over his shoulder.
The man pointed left. Soldier Rank Kwan drove his T-9 beside them, water splashing up from the nosecone.
“Where’s the buoy signal?” shouted Kwan.
Ru checked his rangefinder. His eyebrows shot up. How could he have missed this? He checked the receiver set to the buoy’s signal. The captain of the submarine was supposed to have launched a buoy twenty minutes ago to guide them back. Ru double-checked the receiver. There was no light, no signal, no nothing.
“We should be over it!” Kwan shouted through his speaker.
“Cut your drive,” said Ru.
Soon, the T-9s floated together. It was still dark, the stars shining brightly overhead. It was 2:14 A.M., Pacific Time. Ru checked battery power. It was low, with maybe another thirty minutes left of drive power. As great as they were, the Japanese batteries had been the major limiting factor of their range. And despite years of low funding and neglect, the American Navy was still dangerous, one would think especially so in their territorial waters. There must be no hint of Chinese involvement to their terrorist act, the key reason why the Pao Feng had tried to remain well out of American sight.
“How long do we wait here?” a Commando asked.
“An hour and eighteen minutes,” Kwan said. “Then we must head deeper into the ocean.”
“What happened?” Ru’s partner asked.
“The patrol boat we saw earlier,” said Kwan. “The captain has strict orders not to let anyone detect the submarine. He might have left.”
Ru understood the logic to Kwan’s answer. They had all been instructed on the importance of remaining hidden. If they failed to make pick-up, they were supposed to sink the T-9s and divest themselves of every article of Chinese manufacture. That meant the TOZ-2 underwater pistols, knives, rebreathers—everything that could link them to the White Tigers. Then each Commando was supposed to swim west into deeper waters, drowning rather than accepting possible rescue from the Americans. A White Tiger Commando gave his life to China as his final act of obedience and love for his country.
Not caring for such logic, Ru repeatedly flicked the switch to the receiver. He tapped the console with his finger. “You will work, damn you,” he declared.
After shutting off the T-9s, they sat there for an hour and eighteen minutes, no one talking, all of them dreading the possibility that Kwan was right.
After the time has passed, Kwan shouted through his full-face mask’s speaker, “We are White Tigers!”
Ru looked up in desperation.
“For the greater glory of China,” said Kwan, “we must take the T-9s and drive until the batteries die. Then we will sink them and drop our tanks, belts and—”
“Bu!” shouted Ru, using his speaker.
“We serve China!” shouted Kwan. “We are White Tigers, the greatest soldiers of history!”
The fervency of Kwan’s words shocked Ru. The drill instructors of the training camps and the propagandists had done their jobs too well. China seethed with a vast population of men that was seldom softened or civilized by the presence of women. Among those teeming numbers, the White Tigers had found a fertile field for their heady notions of martial glory and devotion to country. Soldier Rank Kwan had supped deeply on those ideals as had many warriors of the past: Gurkhas, Samurais, Ninjas, Janissaries, Napoleonic Old Guards, Roman Legionaries, Spartans….
Soldier Rank Kwan drew his TOZ-2. Seeing that, Ru threw himself away from Kwan and into the sea. The pistol barked. A steel dart whizzed over Ru and slapped the water.
As he floated, Ru drew his TOZ-2 and steadied his arm over the saddle-seat of his T-9. His partner on the back seat made muffled shouts within his mask. Ru glanced up. The Commando reached over and ripped the underwater pistol out of Ru’s grasp, tossing it into the sea.
In a great Pacific Ocean swell, Ru saw Kwan rise up as the Soldier Rank balanced on his T-9. The White Tiger took aim. Then the other Commando on Kwan’s T-9 jostled the Soldier Rank’s elbow as Kwan attempted another shot. The TOZ-2 plopped into the sea.
With a roar of frustration and desperation, Ru kicked his fins, surging upward. He grasped his partner by the straps of his wetsuit. As Ru sank back into the sea—and as the swell barreled toward them—he pulled the Commando. Within his mask, the White Tiger shouted in surprise. Ru dragged his partner off the T-9, which rolled now with the power of the swell. Releasing his partner—who drifted farther away—Ru frantically fought for a purchase on the T-9. With a growl of noise within his mask, Ru heaved himself onto the vehicle.
Kwan and his partner were arguing on their T-9.
“Lu May,” whispered Ru, his chest hurting with the thought of never seeing his wife again. He pressed the starter button. With a lurch, he drove the T-9 away from Kwan and away from his own partner floating in the sea, watching him. Ru crouched low as he headed back toward the American oil rig. One way or another, he would survive. He would find a way to either slip into China or sneak Lu May out. They would be together again, a family.
A white plume splashed near. Ru twisted around. Kwan was giving chase, plowing down a swell and into the trough after him. Little flares of flame emitted from a pistol. Kwan must have taken his partner’s gun and then shoved the Commando off his T-9. Despite the pistol’s inaccuracy above water, two steel darts struck Ru’s vehicle. The darts shattered the tough ceramic-plate, and one of them must have hit something vital. Ru’s vehicle lost power.
Ru swiveled around as his T-9 slowed. Staring through the full-face mask, Kwan looked stern and resolved. He brought his T-9 closer. Then Kwan pulled the trigger…but nothing happened.
He’d already shot his last dart.
Kwan holstered his pistol, clutched the controls and aimed his T-9 at Ru’s wallowing vehicle. Ru slid off on the other side, entering the water and submerging as Kwan hit. With a cracking sound above Ru’s head, his T-9 skidded away. A bulky object showed where Soldier Rank Kwan fell in.
Ru judged the distance between them. It was too far. Kwan was already drawing his pistol to reload. Ru jackknifed and kicked down toward the depths. He propelled himself through the nearly silent sea, and he glanced back. Near the surface, Kwan shoved a fresh clip into the pistol. With fierce resolve, Ru kicked harder. He needed more depth in order to shorten the underwater pistol’s range. Looking again, Ru saw that Kwan came after him.
Something flashed past him into the depths—Ru assumed it was a steel dart. What else could it be? Two more went past. Then fiery pain burned in Ru’s thigh. He felt there with his hand, and plucked out a dart.
He’s fired four!
Ru reversed direction, kicking upward toward the silvery surface. Kwan was a blot of darkness.
He must be reloading.
Ru drew his combat knife and kicked his fins, straining to reach the White Tiger Commando. As Ru neared, a thrill of fear surged through him. Kwan snapped the underwater pistol shut. As Kwan aligned it, Ru came out of the depths like a shark. His razor-sharp knife sliced Kwan’s hand as the trigger-finger pulled. The retort was a sharp noise underwater. The steel dart hissed past Ru’s head. Then the TOZ-2 floated in a swirl of blood. Ru let go of the knife, beat Kwan to the neutral buoyancy pistol, and kicked out of the Commando’s grasp. In a moment, Ru aimed the pistol at Kwan.
Three sharp retorts sent three steel darts puncturing into Kwan. Pain creased the White Tiger’s face. Then Kwan relaxed as blood oozed from his floating, twitching corpse.
In moments, Ru surfaced. He’d hurt his arm, probably when Kwan had struck his T-9. He swam to Kwan’s wallowing craft, climbed aboard, and then continued heading east for the oil rig. He didn’t know what had happened to the others. At this point, he didn’t care.
When the T-9 ran out of battery power and stopped running, Ru slid into the water for the last time. He used his compass and rangefinder, and he began the journey back to the platform. He was under a severe time constraint. He needed to return and take the Americans down to the stanchions in order to remove the CHKR-57 before the high explosives destroyed the platform. Surely, the oil people would reward him for saving their precious product and saving their American environment. Americans were frightened of spilling oil into the sea. He had heard more than his share of “ethnic” American jokes on the subject.
His injured thigh began to throb, but it was mere pain. By enduring, he would return home to Lu May and his unborn baby. Well, he could never go home again, but there would be a way to secret her out of the country. Greater China was huge and filled with teeming millions—no one would miss a single woman.
A beep alerted him. Ru stopped and shook his head. He didn’t need the locator now. The large oil platform glittered in the darkness. He checked his watch, but it had stopped working. Kwan must have damaged it during the fight.
Ru wrinkled his brow. Would it be better to bypass the oil rig and attempt swimming all the way to the American coast? No—he was too tired. Despite his training, he had swum too far tonight to try a marathon journey to Los Angeles. So he headed for the oil rig.
Three quarters of the way there, he heard a motorboat. Ru stopped and waved his good arm. The dark blot of a boat threw up whitish-colored waves in the moonlight. They had already spotted him, or someone had. That was the reason why the Commandos had come in so deep before.
In time, as outboard engines gurgled and as a large barn-sized object thumped slowly toward him, mercenaries with automatic weapons shouted orders. Ru shouted through his speaker in Chinese, understanding their anger but not knowing their barbaric language. As they looked down at him, the mercenaries jabbered among themselves before two threw down a scaling net. Ru needed help, but with it, he soon flopped onto the boat’s deck.
A heavy man with good boots shoved him onto his back. Another used a knife and cut away the full-face mask. The heavy man placed a heel on Ru’s chest. The mercenary poked him with the barrel-tip of an automatic weapon. The man spoke more gibberish.
“Hong!” said Ru, and he used his good hand, trying to pantomime what would happen. Didn’t anyone here speak Chinese? Ru found their lack amazing.
The mercenaries jabbered again, angrily, as the patrol boat moved faster. It thumped across the seawater, a bumpy ride and loud, too, as they headed for the oil rig. The man with the automatic weapon poked it harder against Ru’s sternum as he repeated his words. Ru heard certain similarities now in the barbaric speech, but still couldn’t understand what they asked.
“Hong!” said Ru, sweeping his arm. “Hong, hong—baozha. Wo hui shuoming nin na zhe tingzhi.” He needed to let them know while there was still time to save the platform. Surely they could understand what he was trying to say.
Several of the Anglo mercenaries traded glances with each other. Two of them stared at the nearing platform.
“Baozha,” said Ru.
With a steel-toed boot, the heavy man with the automatic weapon kicked him in the head. The next thing Ru knew, the patrol boat motored toward a large elevator in the oil platform. The thing was like a Shanghai skyscraper in its towering monstrosity. It throbbed with life, big wheels and gears moving. To Ru it seemed like a hungry dragon, waiting to devour him. He groaned. He was trying to save the Americans and they attacked him. How could they be so stupid?
“Baozha,” Ru said weakly.
That started the mercenaries arguing again. To Ru, they were pointing fingers everywhere. He wanted to sleep, but if he did that, he’d never see Lu May again. Why had the Party leaders who preached about honor broken their word and sent him back onto the frontline? That was wrong. Lu May—
It was then the CHKR-57 detonated. Water geysered upward. Anglo mercenaries howled, bringing up their weapons. Ru lay on the patrol boat’s deck, his head hurting. It looked to him as if the entire oil rig was leaning, as if it was moving and toppling.
Then he realized it was.
“Lu May,” he whispered. “I love you, my—”
Ru never finished his words, as his world ended with the destruction of Platform Number Seven. Falling jagged metal pierced his chest. He knew a moment of scalding pain, and then everything went blank as he died. The same metallic shard tore a hole in the patrol boat.
The boat sank as Blacksand mercenaries jumped into the water, shouting and thrashing to get away. They didn’t. Mighty Platform Seven crashed on them, sucking many under as it sank down into the sea. Several years ago, Platform Seven had been heralded as the new, great hope for California Oil and America’s insatiable energy appetite. Now the great hope was gushing crude, blazing fire and spreading death.
-2-
Desperation
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
The mall was a bad idea, Paul Kavanagh told himself. There were too many people around. It was the reason his ex had chosen to come here. It would make her feel safer: the mall cops, the crowds…and a place where there was merchandise. Buying things always made his ex feel better.
Thinking about that—the clothes for the little man, the washer and dryer she needed and tires for her rundown Ford—Paul nodded. He had to do this. His ex wouldn’t understand. She never had, but the state of the economy meant he had no choice. The Sovereign Debt Depression had supposedly eased several years ago, but tell that to a man whose Marine record ended with a dishonorable discharge. Who had a hard time finding a job. Tell that to someone whom the shrinks said had a difficult time with authority. It wasn’t authority he had trouble with, but assholes.
Paul shoved his hands into his old leather jacket and turned around, scanning the crowds. He was surprised at how many teenagers there were, seeing as it was one-fifteen in the afternoon. Weren’t they supposed to be in school? Was it a holiday now because that oil rig had exploded?
Paul ran a hand through his short brown hair. There was something dangerous in his eyes that made the obvious gang-members look away—at least the intelligent ones and those who thrived by trusting their concrete-sharpened instincts. Paul was a little over six feet, with a linebacker’s shoulders and the trim hips of his college days when he used to slam running backs into the turf. He’d tried out for the pros ten years ago, but had been too light, too small for the steroid-pumped gladiators. Marine Recon had been the next best thing—while it had lasted.
Paul sighed. Cheri was always late. So he didn’t know why he was letting it bother him. She would come, and she’d bring Mikey. She had promised over the phone.
A worried look entered Paul’s eyes. The expression didn’t fit on his tanned features. It seemed wrong, incongruous, an anomaly. What if she didn’t come? Even worse, what if she came but left Mikey home?
Paul sat abruptly on the yellow tiles of the built-up pond near the main mall entrance. His elbow hit his motorcycle helmet, which rested there. The helmet scraped against the tiles as it shot toward the water. Paul barely twisted around in time to catch the helmet, an exhibition of speed and reflexes wasted on the passing crowds. Catching his helmet made him look at the water it had nearly fallen into. Now he saw the pennies, nickels, and dimes glittering there.
I could use a little luck.
He stood again, keeping hold of his helmet, and dug in his jeans pocket. There was a quarter. He made his wish and flipped the coin. It plopped into the water and swayed back and forth until it settled onto the cement.
“Paul?”
Kavanagh spun around, surprised at the quick granting of the wish. His face creased into a smile. It changed him, taking years off his features and showing a sense of vulnerability that had been missing until now.
Little Mikey held onto his mother’s hand. Mikey was six, wore an oversized SF Giant’s baseball cap and had mischievous blue eyes.
“Daddy!” he shouted, ripping his hand from Cheri’s grasp.
Mikey ran full tilt and launched himself as Paul squatted. He caught his boy, surprised at the kid’s weight and the strength of the leap. It knocked Paul back so he bumped against the tiled pond.
“I knocked you back, Daddy!” Mikey shouted.
Paul grinned, straightening himself and taking off the little man’s cap. He messed up sweaty blond hair as Mikey laughed. The peculiar odor of unwashed boy knifed Paul in the heart. In a wave of love, he clutched his son.
“Squeeze me harder, Daddy.”
Paul squeezed, and he put his nose in Mikey’s hair. What had he ever done to help make a wonder like this? By everything holy, he loved this little man.
“Are you going to move back home, Daddy?” The words were muffled in his jacket, but they were loud in Paul’s heart.
“Not just yet,” Paul heard himself say.
“When?” asked Mikey.
Paul wanted to say, “That will depend on your mother,” but he knew that wasn’t fair. It had been just as much his fault as Cheri’s.
He released Mikey and looked up at his ex-wife. She hugged herself, and for a moment, she looked so sad, almost like a lost little girl. She was beautiful, a small woman with long dark hair and a gymnast’s grace.
Long hair—she must be using extensions again. Those cost an easy three hundred. No wonder she couldn’t stay within her budget.
Maybe she saw the change in him as he thought about her spending too much money. Her shoulders stiffened. He’d wished more than once that his tracking instincts were as sharp.
“Hello, Paul,” she said.
Her voice dried the emotions in him. They let him know where he stood with her. He had known. It was just…the hope in Mikey must have transferred into him. Irrationally, he thought about taking the little that was left in his account, changing it into coins, and tossing them one after another into the wishing pond. If the quarter had worked, why not throw in more and fix his life?
He stood, and he found himself clutching the bottom rim of his motorcycle helmet. He wished he could roar like a linebacker and charge into the crowd, flailing right and left with his helmet. If he could knock everyone down, he’d get his old life back. Just the chance to try would be good enough. It was knowing he had absolutely no chance of fixing things that was so galling.
“I’m here just like I said I’d be,” Cheri told him, with her arms crossed. She wasn’t hugging herself anymore. The crossed arms were a shield.
Her tone of voice made it a struggle. Paul scowled. He looked down and saw the little man staring up at him. The shiny face, the smile, they crumpled so fast it startled Paul. Mikey’s lower lip quivered and tears welled in his eyes.
“Hey,” Paul said. He squatted, set his helmet on the scuffed floor and hugged his boy. The poor fellow bit back his sobs and he started hiccupping.
“I won’t cry, Daddy,” Mikey whispered.
“No, no, you’re a tough guy,” Paul said as he patted Mikey on the back.
The little man shoved his face against Paul’s upper chest and began to bawl, the sounds muffled against leather.
“Is this what you wanted?” Cheri asked.
Paul looked up helplessly at his ex-wife.
“No,” she said. “You’re not going to make this my fault.”
Paul stared at the floor as he continued to pat his son on the back. What a lousy world. It wasn’t supposed to work like this. A man grew up, got married, had kids and barbecued on weekends. Maybe he took his kid to a ball game on Sunday. Paul sighed as the mall crowds passed. What made it worse was feeling how threadbare Mikey’s shirt was. That shot a bolt of anger into him. Cheri must have chosen this shirt on purpose, to rub his nose in their lack of money.
Don’t lose your temper. Show your son how to act. Leave him something good to remember about you until next time.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Paul gently pried Mikey from his chest. He grinned, and used the end of his sleeve to wipe the little man’s runny nose. “I wanted you to come to the mall so I could tell you goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” Mikey asked in a lost voice. “Are you leaving us forever, Daddy?”
“Hey buddy, don’t give me that shit.”
“Don’t swear in front of him,” Cheri said.
A scowl flashed across Paul’s face before he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, as he looked down at his boy. “Don’t swear, okay?”
“I won’t,” Mikey said.
“And listen to your mother.”
“I will.”
“Did you lose your job again?” Cheri asked, with just the right touch to her voice to make it a deep-cutting question.
Paul looked up slowly, even as he kept squatting beside his son.
“Yeah, it figures,” she said, but not in the same tone as before. These words had more deadness to them.
“I’ll still make the payments,” he said.
Cheri made a soft sound through her nose as she looked away.
“I already have a new job.”
“Is it selling shoes this time?” Cheri asked.
Instead of getting angry, he kept his tone light. “I’m not a salesman, baby. You know that.”
Her head whipped around, and her brown eyes were wide as she stared at him. “Paul,” she said reproachfully.
How did she do that? How could she know he was about to do something dangerous? “Look,” he said. “I didn’t have any choice. No one’s hiring guys like me around here.”
“You’re going to use a gun again, aren’t you?”
“Lighten up,” he said. “Guns are what I know.”
“Didn’t the Marines teach you anything?” she asked. “The military wants brownnosing more than anyone. You said so yourself.”
“Peacetime military does, yeah.”
“Paul, what are you getting yourself into?”
He heard the worry in her voice. It surprised him. He noticed that Mikey had quit sniffling and was watching his mother.
“You said—” she began.
“Wait,” he said, standing. He extracted a rumpled envelope from his back pocket. It was far too skinny and it had almost cleaned out his account. That showed how pathetically small his account was. He held it out to her.
Cheri stared at the envelope and then looked up at him.
“Two thousand,” he said.
“Is it blood money?”
“Come on, Cheri. What do you think I am?”
“You lost your job again. You only had this one a month. What happened? Why couldn’t you keep it this time?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “I’ll send more later. I know it sounds—”
“What have you gotten yourself into?” she asked, as she took the envelope.
He shrugged, making leathery crinkling sounds with his jacket.
“Are you a bodyguard to one of the corporate clones?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’d last real long doing that.”
“You’re not going into collections with the repo companies, are you?”
That was a tough job in the big cities. Cops only went into some areas with tracked vehicles or in armored choppers, and then only in packs.
“What do you think my discharge means?” he asked. “Around here I can’t do anything that involves guns.”
“Then I don’t get it. How can you be giving me two thousand?” Her eyes widened again. “Unless you’re selling drugs. I hope you’re not selling drugs.” She hesitated, gripping the envelope, obviously thinking about handing it back, but dearly needing the money.
Paul sighed. She’d never understood his stint with the Marines and had positively hated Marine Recon. The funny thing was it had been their best time together, especially with the crazy action in Quebec when his battalion and a few others had been on loan to the Canadian Government. It had been the best because he’d been gone and they’d written emails and texted. She’d been pregnant then, too, and that might have helped.
“You’ve been watching the news about the oil rig?” he asked.
“The one that exploded?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s screwing up the coast,” she said, “killing seals and otters.”
“Well, it didn’t just explode,” he said.
“Terrorists?” she asked.
“People are saying there are three candidates. Al-Qaeda, Iran or the Aztlan separatists.”
“Aztlan? You mean the Aztec people?”
“Yeah, them,” he said. Aztlan separatists were still big in L.A. Too many places here had huge graffiti signs showing their support. However, since the civil war in Mexico had ended, the big Mexican separatist movement in the southwestern U.S. had died down. Fortunately for California, it had never gotten as bad here as it had with the French-speaking separatists in Canada. That had been full-blown combat, the start of civil war in their northern neighbor.
“The Aztecs blew up the oil rig?” Cheri asked.
“No one’s claiming responsibility. They’re just one of the suspects. The thing is, most commentators doubt they would have caused such environmental damage to their own coast. Whoever it was must have used some pretty sophisticated equipment.”
“What does any of this have to do with you?” Cheri asked.
“Security,” he said.
“You better not be thinking of doing something crazy.”
Paul shook Mikey’s shoulder and pointed at a candy wagon about thirty feet away. As he dug out his wallet and took out a five, he said, “Why don’t you ask that old lady by the wagon to get you some gummy bears?”
“Yeah!” said Mikey, speaking the word with the same inflection Paul would have used. Mikey snatched the five and ran to the candy wagon.
Paul kept his eye on Mikey as he spoke to Cheri. “Blacksand runs security for most of the Western oil companies. The blogs say they lost some people in the explosion.”
“You can’t work for Blacksand,” Cheri said. “I remember when you wanted to work for them before—Blacksand demands a clean record.”
“Right, normally a dishonorable would stop them from hiring a real soldier. But there are two reasons why they’re willing to take me on a provisional basis now.”
“What are they?”
Paul still watched his son. Mikey was talking to the old candy lady with a dress that went all the way to the floor. His boy pointed back at him. The old woman looked over. She was wearing dark sunglasses. Was the candy lady blind? Paul waved. The old woman smiled and waved back. Then she bent down to Mikey, spoke to him, accepted the five-dollar bill and examined the candy wagon.
“With this latest terrorist act,” Paul said, “working security on an oil rig has turned into hazardous duty. That means more than a few people who would normally do it are getting jittery. That’s good, though, because Blacksand just raised their rates. The oil companies want beefed security on all their rigs. They don’t want this happening again.”
“There must be tons of people eager for security work,” Cheri said, “especially if it pays well.”
“So why hire an ace like me?” Paul asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“You know that isn’t what I mean.”
“Yeah?”
“Paul, I don’t want you to die.”
“Me neither,” he said after a moment.
“What’s the second reason?” Cheri asked. “The real reason Blacksand is willing to overlook your discharge?”
“That’s the funny thing—the kicker. They want a snow-weather veteran.”
“You mean that time you fought in the Canadian Shield?”
The Canadian Shield was a huge geological region that curved around Hudson Bay like a giant horseshoe. Few people lived in the region, as it was unsuitable for agriculture. The Shield was dotted with lakes, famous resorts, vast forests and gold, copper, iron, nickel and uranium mines.
“It was northern Quebec, where it was as cold as Hell,” he said.
“Hell is hot. You fought in blizzards and snowstorms. Where do people have oil rigs in places like that? I thought most oil derricks were found in deserts.”
Paul hesitated to tell her.
“Is it going to be cold where you’re going?” she asked.
“I’m flying to the Arctic Circle,” he said.
The energy crunch meant the oil companies were hunting for crude wherever they could find it. The new bonanza was the Arctic Circle and Antarctica.
“Do you mean Alaska?” Cheri asked.
“I wish I did. No. The Arctic Circle…the rig is in the Arctic Ocean.”
“Isn’t it icy up there all the time?”
“Yeah,” he said. He remembered reading somewhere that the ice used to melt in summer, or a lot of it did. That must have been before it had gotten cold again. A new glacial period, they called it. He remembered watching a history show about the Black Death in the Middle Ages. There had been harsher weather back then, too. It had hurt the crops and vineyards just as it did these days. The whole thing went in cycles, apparently. Now it was their turn, and according to what he’d looked up, it made the Arctic almost as cold as space.
“I’m going to the closest rig to the North Pole,” he said. “I’ll be knocking on Santa Claus’s door.”
“Is it dangerous?”
It had to be dangerous if they were willing to hire him. Near the North Pole—did the wind howl all night long? It was supposed to be dark half of the year.
“I can’t see how,” he lied.
“So why do they need you then?”
“It’s all about insurance. If you look at things deeply enough it always goes back to the money.” Had that been true about them? Once the government had kicked him out of the Marines, he’d had one job after another, and they’d steadily been crappier jobs each time. The money had started drying up and so had their marriage.
Cheri glanced at the envelope in her hand. Looking thoughtful, she slid her purse off a shoulder, clicked it open and buried the two thousand in it. As she slid the loops back onto her shoulder, she looked into his eyes. “Take care of yourself up there, and try to keep this one, okay? We need the money.”
He forced himself to nod. “Are you and Mikey doing okay?”
“I’m almost finished with Beauty College. I’m already cutting hair on the side.”
“Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.
Her lips firmed. “We agreed you weren’t supposed to ask that.”
A stab of heat burned in his chest. She’d laid that down as a condition for him seeing Mikey. The courts had screwed him, giving her full custody. He supposed none of that mattered now that he was headed for the Arctic Circle.
“I’ll call you when I get there,” he said.
“Mikey will like that.”
“I’m glad you came,” he said.
She cocked her head, and her lips parted. “Try to get along more at work, okay? You’re too much of a loner.”
He hated when she said that. “I’ll tell him goodbye.”
“Don’t leave mad,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Okay,” she said, her face tightening, “if that’s the way you want it, I’m fine with that.”
He took a deep breath and counted to three. “I’m not mad. I’m glad you came.”
Cheri studied his face. He waited for a smile to break out as it used to in the beginning. Instead, she said, “Goodbye, Paul.”
The way she said it—he paused. There was something final in her words, something almost fated. He picked up his helmet, managed to give her a nod and turned toward the candy wagon. Mikey was racing back with a bag of gummy bears clutched in his fist. His son was laughing. He liked that.
“Run harder, little man!” shouted Paul.
Mikey put his head down and he ran full out. The tennis shoes slapped the floor as he approached. Paul dropped his helmet, grabbed Mikey under the armpits and threw him into the air above his head. Mikey squealed with delight. Cheri had never liked him doing that, but who knew when he’d see his boy again. Paul caught Mikey and hugged him tightly.
“I love you, big guy.”
“Me too,” Mikey said, breathlessly.
Paul set him down and knelt on one knee. “You take care of your mother, okay?”
“I will.”
“I’ll visit you in a few months when I have some time off.”
“Promise?” Mikey asked with something close to desperation.
“Of course I promise,” Paul said.
“And call, Daddy.”
“I will,” Paul said, standing up.
“Wait, Daddy!” Mikey said. He opened his striped bag of gummy bears. “You have to eat one of these with me first.”
Paul recognized the delaying tactic, and for a moment, there was a stab of pain in his heart. If he were a better person, things might have worked between Cheri and him.
“Thanks,” Paul said, smiling at his son as he took an orange gummy bear.
“Eat it, Daddy.”
Paul did, hardly tasting a thing.
“Take some with you for the road,” Mikey said.
“You be a good boy,” Paul whispered.
Mikey nodded.
The striped bag crinkled as Paul dug out some more gummy bears. Then he turned away, heading out. He couldn’t take any more of this.
“Bye, Daddy!” Mikey shouted.
Paul turned back one last time, lifting his motorcycle helmet, waving goodbye. He waved an extra time for Cheri, as she stepped up to Mikey. Then Paul Kavanagh was stumbling for the mall entrance, oblivious to the gang members he brushed out of the way.
Someday, he was going to do things right.
HANZHONG, P.R.C.
The growing, seething mob chanted angrily. Many waved their fists at the video cameras, the ubiquitous cams that hung from streetlights, buildings, and sometimes from tethered balloons. A few of the rioters shook rocks or sticks. The glass buildings surrounding the street reverberated with their chants. A packed mob, they filled the street and sidewalks like rush-hour pedestrians in any major Chinese city. Chest-to-chest, shoulder-to-shoulder, they swayed with repressed power. They were hungry, cold and bitter.
It was blustery, and most of the crowd wore gray overcoats. Over eighty percent were men under thirty and they were uniformly thin. They pressed against each other, shoving at times, often asking if it was true:
Were the trucks leaving with their rice?
The front of the shuffling horde stood before the main gate to the massive rice processing plant. Several years ago, the institute had installed an iron fence, bars ten feet tall and with barbed points on top. Some chanters thrust their arms between the bars, shaking their fists at the militiamen on guard or recording them on their cell phones.
The thin line of militia behind the main gate stirred uneasily. It was supposed to be a routine shipment. The militiamen had arrived early this morning to provide security during transport and hadn’t expected anything like this. The eighteen soldiers gripped shiny rifles. Despite the chill, most of their faces glistened with sweat. Behind them rumbled a fleet of hidden semis—big ultra-modern haulers filled to capacity—that planned to transport the rice to the coastal region.
There was another man listening to the semis rumble. He was a former American, and he stood at the front of the mob. At times the pressure from behind pushed him against the gate. He didn’t know it, but more people kept arriving. They joined the throng and packed the street as they added their chants. The echoing sounds were like thunder to others in the city, drawing the curious and frightening the rest, particularly the police and local Party members.
The former American, Henry Wu, gripped cold bars as bodies pressed against him. He grunted and pushed with his arms, straining as he shoved his back against the men behind, trying to gain breathing room. Henry had immigrated to China four years ago in 2028. He was a tractor driver, and had been living in the city his father had escaped twenty-five years ago. Most of the Chinese in Hanzhong were Han, but Henry was Manchu—a trifle taller than those around him and possessed of a singular difference: a gun.
Gaining space, Henry released the bars and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. In the left pocket his fingers curled around a Glock 19, an old semiautomatic smuggled into China when he’d immigrated. Henry was sick of being hungry, and along with everyone else he was angry that their rice was being shipped to the coast. He knew he shouldn’t have brought the Glock, but he had it just the same.
He’d left America to find work. In China, there were jobs, but since the glaciation had worsened several years ago, there wasn’t enough food. A week ago, he’d talked to his sister over the phone. She lived in Detroit. There was food in the U.S., she said, but after the Sovereign Debt Depression, there was seldom enough work.
Is it too much to ask for both? Henry thought to himself.
A burly militiaman blew a whistle, the normally piercing blast barely audible over the mass chanting. The militiaman stepped out of the line of guards, bringing a rifle-butt to his shoulder. The other militia stared at him, some with amazement. They were young men and clearly frightened by today’s events.
Henry craned his neck, looking to see what the commotion was about. Oh. A pimple-faced teenager shimmied up the bars. Reaching hands shoved him higher. The teenager moved carefully over the barbs, trying not to stick himself.
The aiming militiaman opened his mouth, letting the silver whistle drop to his chest. He shouted, or at least it looked like he did; the volume from the chanting horde drowned out his words. Regardless, his actions spoke loudly enough. Something must have made the militiaman pause. He glanced back at his companions. None of them had dared raise a rifle. The militiaman gestured angrily at them, berating his fellows. Was he the First Rank? He looked older than the rest, and the marks on his uniform were different.
A militiaman in the line shook his head at the First Rank. The others just looked at the older man.
Snarling, the First Rank took two steps toward the gate. He aimed his rifle at the teenager and fired. The sound was loud. Those nearest quit chanting and the teenager slumped onto the barbs. He twitched in death, snared on the iron fence.
While others shifted their cell phones, recording this, Henry found himself aiming his Glock. He squeezed off a shot. The banging retort hurt his ears. It made men around him flinch. The gun bucking in Henry’s hands shocked him.
The First Rank staggered backward as the bullet plowed through his stomach, blowing out cloth, flesh and intestines. The rifle fell as the First Rank hit the pavement, his head pointed away from the mob and toward the hidden semis.
The crowd went wild as it watched the hooked teenager. Men clutched the bars and madly rattled the fence. It groaned, leaning inward.
The remaining militia backed away from the enraged chanters. Then the militiaman on the left end of the line hurled his rifle away. Spinning around as his rifle bounced across the cement, the young man sprinted for the depths of the rice-processing plant. The panic was contagious as the example routed through sixteen numbed and frightened brains. Two other militiamen followed the deserter. That must have wilted whatever courage remained among the others. They rest turned to run, although several kept their weapons.
As the last militia disappeared around the nearest building, the crowd surged against the iron bars. The bars groaned and leaned farther inward. The front rank, including Henry, scrambled over bars, causing many of the poles to crash to the ground. Henry raced at the front of the horde, determined to grab several bags of rice.
The flight of the militia spread back through the mob like wildfire. It emboldened the horde, and the chanting increased in volume. Like a living beast, the mob surged forward.
Ten minutes later and at the rear of the mob, ninety Hanzhong policemen arrived. Jumping out of armored carriers, they drew batons and tasers. Blowing whistles, the police charged into the crowd, swinging batons and shocking people.
It should have worked. This was China, and the normally cowed populace had generations of obedience trained into them. Today it was different, because the mob had tasted victory. It was like a tiger drinking human blood. It liked the taste and wanted more. Perhaps as importantly, several of the dropped rifles made it into the rioters’ hands.
Shots rang out. Policemen fell to the pavement. Buoyed by success, young men in the mob picked up rocks, bottles—anything. They rained debris onto the surprised police as popping shots sounded. More baton-wielders fell dead. Young men howled and they charged en mass. They bowled over policemen and ripped away batons. The beatings began immediately, as did the merciless tasing of their former tormentors.
Some police made it back to the carriers. They climbed aboard, managing to fight off their attackers and drive for the nearest police headquarters. It was a massive building with two gleaming lion statues in front. There the police barricaded themselves behind heavy doors and the latest security systems.
Eighteen policemen died on the street. They were clubbed, tased until heart failure, or shot. It was a heady feeling for the rioting masses, and they wanted more, much more.
The police in the station radioed for outside help, and news of the trouble quickly reached the highest levels. As the police in the barricaded headquarters passed out rifles and took positions at the windows, a convoy of heavy trucks left the city of Guangyuan forty kilometers away. A different convoy roared from Baoji. Together, the two convoys raced three thousand riot police toward Hanzhong and its gigantic rice processing plant.
By now, the Hanzhong police were phoning one another, wondering what to do. They were frightened by the boldness of the rioters. They dreaded the looting and reached a quick consensus: to wait for reinforcements.
The first convoy reached Hanzhong at three twenty-four in the afternoon. The second arrived forty-three minutes later. A phone call from a raving police general in Baoji convinced the Hanzhong chief of police to begin riot suppression.
The Army cut city communication cables. Rushed electronic warfare (EW) units landed via helicopter and jammed satellite connections three hours later. Hanzhong was blacked out as the riot police, Army MPs, and revitalized Hanzhong police began to suppress looters, rioters, and subversives.
The police turned brutal then, wanting retribution. Nothing angered a master like a revolting slave. China was an ordered society, and the police gave the orders. The shooting began in earnest.
Then the higher powers began to arrive: The Dong Dianshan—East Lightning. They were the Party Security Service and landed at Hanzhong Airport at 7:19 PM. They wore brown uniforms with red straps running from the right shoulder to the red belt around their waist. An armband on their left arm showed a three-pronged lightning bolt. Each was a card-carrying member of the Socialist-Nationalist Party—what the former Communist Party had transformed into. Among their varied talents, East Lightning was practiced at rooting out ringleaders and enemy saboteurs.
By then, the police had imprisoned thousands, but had only interrogated a handful. East Lightning took over. Agents compared the video evidence, combing files from hundreds of webcams, looking for the perpetrators.
The next morning, around 10:15 AM—as Henry Wu cowered in his apartment—police smashed through his door with a four-man pulverizer.
Henry already lay on the floor, with his hands behind his head. “I’m innocent!” he shouted. He’d trashed the Glock early that morning.
A police officer kicked him in the side. Another shot a taser into his back, the prongs piercing Henry’s bathrobe and sticking in his flesh.
“You’re making a mistake!” Henry shouted.
The police shocked him into unconsciousness.
Henry awoke on the ride to Police Headquarters, Fifth District. He was handcuffed and sitting beside a large Korean officer in the back of a van. It was Chinese policy to use policemen of varying heritage. For instance, Han Chinese police worked in predominantly Manchu territory.
“Please,” Henry whispered. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The Korean policeman pointed at the bags of looted rice found in Henry’s apartment.
“Is it a crime to eat enough to live?” Henry asked.
The Korean smirked, rolling his eyes.
After a bewildering set of twists and turns, the van entered the Fifth District Police Headquarters. When the vehicle came to a halt, the side door rolled open. Two Mongolians in brown uniforms with red belts entered the vehicle, causing the van to tilt their way.
Henry’s stomach curdled. “Please,” he whispered. Then his mouth became so dry that he could no longer speak.
The two East Lightning operatives hustled Henry through the cargo entrance and to a large elevator. Once inside the elevator, it went down to the basement. When the door slid open, Henry’s knees buckled, and he might have pitched onto the cement.
Fortunately or not, the two operatives each gripped Henry by his arms, marching him through the underground garage as his feet dragged. They entered a lit room with a bloodstained chair in the center. The chair had strange drill-like devices around it, much like a twentieth century dentist’s chair.
Henry twisted, trying to free himself. The left operative touched a stun rod to Henry’s neck. A numbing shock ended Henry’s resistance. They dumped him in the chair and tightened leather straps around his legs, arms, chest and one around his forehead, pinning him in place.
“I’m a loyal Party member,” Henry said.
A new operative appeared, a small man with large ears. He, too, wore the brown uniform with red belts and the armband with the three-pronged lightning bolt. He smiled, and his eyes seemed reptilian.
“You are Henry Wu,” the man said, checking a computer-slate.
“I am, but I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You shot a soldier yesterday,” the small officer said.
The words shocked Henry worse than the stun device. East Lightning knew everything. “No,” he said. “That was someone else. You have the wrong man.”
“We shall see,” said the operative. “In case you wish to confess immediately, I will now explain the procedure. First, we shall inject you with a sense enhancer.” The man took a body-sized apron from a hook and tied it so it protected the front of his uniform. Next, he produced a large hypodermic needle. A sludge-like yellow solution moved within.
Henry tried to twist free, but the straps held him immobile.
The officer dabbed Henry’s neck with a cold, wet swab.
“Please,” Henry wept. “I just wanted some rice. I was so hungry. I was tired of the ache in my stomach.”
“Ah,” said the officer, as he stabbed the needle into Henry’s neck. The man pressed the plunger, squeezing the solution into Henry.
“All right!” shouted Henry. Spit flew from his mouth as he said, “I shot the militiaman. He killed the teenager. I had to do something.”
“Excellent,” the officer said. “It is most healthy that you admit to the truth.” He reached up for a drill and lowered it toward Henry’s face as he sat down on a stool.
“What else do you want to know?” Henry asked, squirming to free himself.
“Many things,” the officer said. He tied a cloth over his mouth and nose, set aside his hat, and slipped on a doctor’s cap. He flipped a switch and the drill began to whine. “First, Henry Wu, do you work for the CIA?”
“What?” Henry asked, bewildered.
“Open your mouth,” the officer said coldly.
Instead of opening his mouth, Henry clamped his jaws shut.
The two Mongolian operatives moved to the chair. They used thick fingers, prying open Henry’s mouth. One inserted a bracer to keep his teeth apart. The other inserted a tongue suppressor, to keep it out of the way.
“You will talk to me, Henry Wu. You will tell me what I want to know.”
An hour and twenty-four minutes later, it was over. The small officer switched off his recording device. Then he used a cloth to wipe the bloody specks from his hands. “Dump the body in the incinerator. Then give me several minutes before you bring in the next patient.”
“Sir?” asked the larger Mongolian.
“Hmm, is that too imprecise for you?” asked the officer. He took off the mask and sipped from a water bottle. “Make it fifteen minutes. Afterward, bring in the next one.”
The two operatives unbuckled the straps holding down Henry Wu’s contorted corpse. Each grabbed a shoulders and hip, lifting the body out of the chair. They carried Henry Wu to the mobile Security Incinerator they had brought along for the task. It looked like it was going to be a long day before they were through. At least the position paid well, and they were able to eat enough to keep their normal weight. Not everyone could say that these days. Therefore, they went about their task with quiet resignation, looking forward to tonight’s meal.
Meanwhile, the small officer who had interrogated Henry sat in his chair. He stared into space and smoked a cigarette. For his brief fifteen minutes, he blanked his mind, trying not to think about anything.
-3-
Plans
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
Two old friends played ping-pong downstairs in a basement. They’d first met in college many years ago, both of them highly competitive at intramural sports. They had double-dated then and ended up marrying their girls. Both had stayed in Alaska where they had gone on many hunting and fishing trips together. They were like brothers, and even in their early forties, they were just as competitive as they had been two decades ago.
Stan Higgins was a high school history teacher. He supplemented his sparse income as a captain in the Alaskan National Guard. His nickname was Professor, and he had read far too much military history for his own good.
Besides being a pastor, the second man, Bill Harris, was a sergeant in the local Militia. The Militia was a recent development due to limited Federal funding and the continuing shrinkage of the U.S. military. The Militia was voluntary, the men paying for their own weapons and uniforms. They mustered under their state’s control and had National Guard drill instruction every summer for those who wished for advanced training. Bill was one of those. The states with the largest Militias per capita were Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Alaska. The three southern states had large Militias due to the proximity of the Mexican border; Alaska did because so many of the state’s population were hunters and fishermen.
Stan used his ping-pong paddle and bounced an orange ball up and down. Bill stood at the other end of the green table, waiting. The single bulb above the middle of the table flickered as the light dimmed. Brownouts were common these days and electrical grid repairs constant.
“Think the lights will stay on tonight?” Bill asked.
Stan grunted noncommittally. They had played four games of ping-pong already, tying at two wins each. Their wives talked upstairs as the children played board games.
“Just a minute,” Bill said. He moved to a shelf and checked his cell phone. “It’s getting late. Should we call it?”
The bulb stopped flickering then as the light strengthened.
“We can’t leave the series at a tie,” Stan said.
Bill nodded. “It’s more fun with a winner. Since this is the last game, should we volley for serve?”
“I lost the last game. Loser gets first serve next game.”
“Oh, okay,” said Bill, with an at-least-I-tried grin.
Stan kept bouncing the ball on his paddle. There was a distracted look on his face. He had been trying to forget about his dilemma all night. Trying to beat Bill had done that, but now…
“Is anything wrong?” asked Bill.
Stan nodded. “It’s Sergeant Jackson.”
“The police officer?”
“I think he wants to bust my dad.” Then the words gushed out as Stan asked, “Is it wrong to hold a grudge?”
“Do you mean is it wrong for the officer to hold a grudge against your dad? Or is it wrong for you to hold a grudge against the officer?”
Stan looked up, letting the ping-pong ball bounce off the table and onto the floor.
“Bitterness never helps anyone,” Bill said.
“I know.”
“You need to forgive Sergeant Jackson for what he did to your dad.”
Stan scowled. “I understand what you’re saying….” He shook his head.
“Well, think of it like—”
“I’m sorry,” said Stan, as the bulb flickered again. “It’s late. We’d better finish the series before the power cuts off.” He retrieved the orange ball and took his serving stance.
“I know this can be a hard topic,” Bill said.
Stan didn’t want to think about it anymore. He should have known Bill would tell him to give his worry to God. Now Bill would start talking about it. Stan decided to put an end to the lecture by serving the ball, using a crafty spin.
Surprised by the serve, Bill moved too late. He still managed to hit the ball, but it zoomed into the net.
“One to zero,” Stan said.
Bill glanced at him. “One to zero,” he said, his voice changing from its reflective pastor’s tone to his competitive voice. Then the two friends began to play in earnest.
BEIJING, P.R.C.
Jian Hong rode in the back of a limousine as he passed big Chinese cars. City traffic moved past massive buildings in the heart of Beijing. The construction boom had altered the city. The rich lived in palaces, sprawling villas with gold inlaid marble, redwood furniture and magnificent gardens. The latest craze was having a zoo on one’s property, with tigers, leopards, pandas, baboons—Jian had recently purchased a polar bear. He was inordinately proud of it and hoped to buy a male so he could mate them.
The heart of Beijing possessed titanic structures, showing the opulence of oil-rich China. It was a tribute to the nation’s greatness, to its power. Above the massive structures was the even larger Mao Square with the Politburo Building and the Chairman’s quarters. Glass towers reflected the sun’s light, while gigantic statues beggared the imagination. The Chairman had a mania for architecture. He wanted to show the world and China’s millions that nothing could compare with the present government. The construction boom flowered throughout China’s coastal region, particularly here in Beijing.
The big cars manufactured in Chinese automotive plants moved along wide avenues as hordes surged along the extra-large sidewalks. Beijing had become the mightiest city on Earth.
Jian witnessed this, but he enjoyed none of it as his security personnel escorted him to Mao Square. He was late for a meeting with the Chairman, a meeting that could well decide his fate in the world.
***
Jian Hong hurried into a large room on the third floor of the Chairman’s governmental quarters. Huge paintings of former chairmen hung on the walls, beginning with Mao Zedong and ending with the present ruler of Greater China. They were painted in a heroic style. The portrait of the present Chairman showed a strong, youthful man with a wild shock of hair and an outthrust chin. It had little in common with the old man in the wheelchair sitting at the head of the table.
Jian nodded a greeting to the Minister of the Navy, an old admiral with a bald dome. Compared to the Chairman, the admiral was an example of youthful vigor.
The Chairman’s chin presently touched his chest and his eyes were closed. His withered hands rested on his lap, one covered by a plaid blanket. The formerly wild hair was combed to the right, and it was much thinner, showing patches of skull. A degenerative disease had been eating away at his strength for years now, radically altering a once hard-charging dictator. In earlier days, the Chairman had re-forged the old Communist Party into the Socialist-Nationalist organ that now swelled with the pride of nearly two billion Chinese. His vision had led the country through the terrible crises of 2019—the fact that it had been the Chairman’s guiding hand in 2016 that caused China to unload her U.S. Bonds had been carefully weeded from the history books. That maneuver had brought about the American banking and stock market collapse, which in turn had started the Sovereign Debt Depression throughout the world. That worldwide shock had, in turn, brought about the crises of 2019 in China.
Despite his role in causing it, under the Chairman’s brilliance, China had emerged from the Sovereign Debt Depression as the most powerful nation on Earth. He had led them in the swift but profitable war against Siberia, then in the orgasmic Invasion of Taiwan, and lastly in forging the Pan Asian League. Wresting Japan from America’s military orbit had been his greatest diplomatic coup.
The Chairman snored softly at the head of the table, gnome-like in appearance, but still holding the reins of power in his arthritic hands. His security personnel surrounded the building, hard-eyed killers chosen for their loyalty and willingness to murder anyone that the Chairman indicated. Ruthless secret policemen backed them. Those policemen used computers, truth serums and secret chambers to tear needed information from suspects. In the majority of cases, however, the Chairman used a velvet glove in his dealings. His deftness had won him much. But the iron was still there, as was the willingness to crush any opponent.
Like the others, Jian Hong feared the Chairman. Jian wondered, as surely the others must, if the degenerative disease might one day cause the Chairman to institute a bloodbath as Mao had done during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Despite the fear, Jian and the others attempted to maneuver the dying old man toward their particular projects. The Chairmen had become like an emperor from a bygone era, with Deng Fong as his prime minister and the others vying to gain the Chairman’s ear.
“Your tardiness surely indicates the contempt you feel toward the rest of us, Agricultural Minister,” Deng said.
“I beg your pardon,” Jian said. He’d had trouble at one of the checkpoints. It dawned on him that Deng might have engineered the trouble. The possibility put an icicle of renewed fear through Jian. Had Deng corrupted the Chairman’s bodyguards? Was Deng broadcasting his ability to assassinate the Chairman at his leisure? Jian wondered if he might have been wiser going to Deng in secret, falling on his knees and begging to become one of his followers.
Who am I to race with tigers? Jian thought to himself. These past weeks had been torture, as two more rice-riots had occurred in different parts of the country. Jian had maneuvered hard to keep his post, secretly using the last of his hidden food reserves to bolster stocks in the cities. In several months, real famine would stalk the inner provinces. They must find more sources of food.
In the old days before the new glacial period, the Earth’s food supply had come from two major areas: the great Euro-Russian plains and the American wheat-fields. China’s rice paddies had helped, as had other regions. But the bulk of the food supply to feed the masses, the world’s billions, came from the two key areas. With the new glaciation, the Gulf Stream had changed its flow, causing massive freezing on the Euro-Russian plains, but America was still blessed with warm enough weather to produce bumper crops. It meant that a starving world looked to America and to its Grain Union allies. It meant that Chinese wealth could only scrape up so much food on the open market—then it needed the Grain Union’s storehouses, which meant China needed American permission to buy.
Deng Fong stirred. He did not look like a tiger. He was in his mid-seventies and had a weak left eye that he could barely keep open. He wore a black suit of the finest make and had strangely smooth skin. It was one of Deng’s vanities—skin-tucks. Stories about his sexual exploits were legendary, as were the amounts of his testosterone injections and Viagra with which he was said to indulge himself. He looked old, but still acted with vitality.
Jian turned on his computer, the machine built into the table. He knew that one of the Chairman’s people would analyze everything he brought up, everything he read. The Chairman loved psychological profiles, placing an inordinate trust in them. Therefore, Jian had memorized a list of “safe” items he would look up here, items given to him by his staff.
Deng cleared his throat, the sound aimed toward the head of the table. He sat nearest the Chairman. The Chairman snorted, and his eyelids flickered. Slowly, the old man opened his eyes, and just as slowly, the Chairman straightened his body. Everyone here knew it pained the old man to sit up straight. They could see it on his face. But he did it anyway, refusing to hunch, and that frightened Jian. The Chairman examined each of them in turn. There were four other Politburo members in the room. They belonged to the Ruling Committee, the Chairman’s inner circle of advisors. When the old man’s eyes fell on him, Jian felt the gaze like hot pokers in his soul.
Jian’s key ally was the Minister of the Navy, Admiral Qiang—tall, handsome, and still athletic at seventy-one. He was easily the most adventuresome personality in the room in terms of military action.
Qiang and Deng were bitter enemies.
“Sir,” Deng told the Chairman. “I’m afraid that I have terrible news to report.”
The Chairman swiveled his head so those hot eyes locked onto Deng Fong.
“Sir,” Deng said, “I am afraid that we have taken a viper amongst us. We have trusted a warmonger who plans to tread on the charred remains of a billion corpses so he can climb to supreme power.”
“Elaborate,” whispered the Chairman.
The whispery dry words tightened Jian’s stomach, and suddenly, the room felt much too warm.
Deng bowed his head and turned toward Jian, staring at him fixedly. “There is one among us who sabotaged my talks in Sydney. I believe he did it in hopes of stirring war. This war will cover his negligent mistakes in the agricultural sector. He would rather see millions die in a nuclear exchange than have his corrupt mishandling brought to light.”
“These are serious charges,” the Chairman whispered.
Jian now felt limp with fear as Deng turned to the old man in the wheelchair. Jian hadn’t expected a direct and personal assault today. Even more, he hadn’t expected Deng to bypass Admiral Qiang in his admonishments. That had been part of the genius of Jian’s plan, or so he’d told himself more than once. Admiral Qiang had authorized the commando mission against the American oil well. Jian had hoped to use the admiral as a shield as Qiang bore the brunt of Deng’s verbal assault. Now—
“The Agricultural Minister used his insidious and occult powers to warp Admiral Qiang’s good judgment,” Deng was saying. “He lured the admiral and tricked him into committing an adventurous and foolhardy act at precisely the wrong moment. The destruction of the American oil well occurred in the early morning, twelve hours before I would speak alone with the American Secretary of State. It sabotaged what I believe would have been a healing accord between our two nations. The Americans have grain. We have oil. The Americans need oil and we need grain. What better way to bring harmony between our two nations than trading oil for grain?”
You didn’t count on me learning about your plan, you cunning snake, Jian thought. Deng would have been the hero, bringing grain to a hungry nation. He would die as the failed Agricultural Minister. No, he had a different plan, one he worked hard to implement.
“Please excuse my interruption,” Jian said. “With your permission, sir,” he said to the Chairman, “I would like to point out certain salient points that Minister Fong has conveniently forgotten.”
The Chairman’s head swiveled slightly so those ancient eyes fell onto Jian. Again, Jian felt the power there, and knew now that his life was in peril.
“Speak,” the Chairman whispered in his ancient voice, “but make it brief.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jian said. His voice sounded weak. He would never convince anyone if he came across as timid. Sitting straighter, clearing his throat, he spoke in a deeper tone, trying to come across as assured. “Three years ago, at Minister Fong’s insistence, I took over the Agricultural Ministry.”
“You snatched at the opportunity for power,” Deng said. “You acted like a monkey in a panda tree.”
“Let him speak,” said the Chairman.
Deng bowed his head.
Jian blinked in amazement. Deng’s inappropriate words gave him confidence, and with the rebuff from the Chairman—Jian felt his hopes soar. Then he wondered if the rebuff might have been engineered beforehand to give the appearance of fairness on the Chairman’s part. The thought was sobering, and it constricted his throat.
Jian lifted a glass of water, sipping, trying to marshal his thoughts. “As I was saying, sir—gentlemen—I took over the Agricultural Ministry at Minister Fong’s insistence. It was hoped I could turn around the disastrous failures of the previous years. I worked with painstaking zeal, routinely putting in sixteen-hour workdays. I tried many experiments. The sad truth is that nature has conspired against China. Glaciation combined with our great population has made self-sufficiency in foodstuffs an impossibility. It is the same everywhere as famine stalks the planet. Only a few nations export grain or other foods. Occidentals of European origin control each of the grain-exporting nations. They have formed a union—”
“These things are known to us,” Deng said. “Sir—”
“Let him speak,” the Chairman said. “You have laid the charge. Now let him defend himself—if he can.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jian said. “My point is that these barbarians have long conspired against China. In our days of weakness, they carved our glorious nation into separate spheres of influence. It was you, sir, who finally brought the last of our stolen lands home. We are strong again, the strongest nation on Earth. Can any of us truly believe that the Anglo nations will accept this and roll onto their backs for us?”
“You are deluded,” Deng said. “The Western powers gave up their chauvinism long ago. This is the nuclear age—”
“China needs fear no nuclear attack!” Jian said forcefully, banging his fist on the table. “We have the most modern anti-ballistic missile and laser defense system in the world. If the Americans dare launch their ballistic missiles, our defensive systems will knock them down. Then they would lie supine before us, dreading our missiles that could rain upon them with impunity.”
“How does destroying the American breadbasket help China?” Deng asked.
“It doesn’t,” admitted Jian. “I merely point out the ludicrous idea that America, or any other nation, can threaten China with nuclear weapons.” He pointedly glanced at Admiral Qiang and the Police Minister, yearning for their verbal support.
Xiao Yang, the Police Minister, was lean. He wore thick glasses and possessed strangely staring eyes. He gave Jian a nearly imperceptible nod of encouragement. The man’s eyes seemed to shine behind the thick glasses, but he didn’t say anything. Admiral Qiang seemed lost in thought, perhaps not even listening to the argument.
“You viper,” Deng said. “You mouth war when peace can serve us better. The Americans were about to increase their grain exports as we ship them more oil.”
“Do you trust these Americans?” Jian asked. “Aren’t you aware of their new space program? They aren’t foolishly attempting to land men on Mars or return to the Moon. Instead, they are building a laser launch-site. They are on the cusp of building a system to put items into space at a cheap cost per ton. With it, they will build a Solar Powered Satellite that collects the sun’s rays and micro-beam the free energy to Earth. It is the next step in industrial power.”
“It already changes our weather patterns,” Police Minister Xiao said.
Deng glanced at the Police Minister before he said, “You both spout folly.”
“Do you deny the fact of their space program?” asked Jian. He hoped Xiao didn’t say anything about Henry Wu, the supposed CIA agent. It had helped sway Admiral Qiang earlier, but it wouldn’t help here.
“Our technologists are hard at work on a similar space system,” Deng said. “This is all beside the point.”
“If the Americans build enough of these satellites,” Jian said, “they will no longer need our oil. What then shall we trade for their badly needed grain?”
Deng stared at Jian before he turned to the Chairman. “He confuses the issue, a tactic he has perfected as Agricultural Minister.”
The Chairman nodded slowly. “Make your point, Jian Hong.”
Even as the small hairs prickled on the back of Jian’s neck, he spoke out strongly. “Now is the moment to strike, sir. Now is the time to fix the American food market in our favor—forever.”
“By destroying oil platforms?” the Chairman asked sarcastically.
The old man’s eyes seemed like twin lasers stabbing into Jian’s heart. He took a deep breath. This was coming on much faster than he had planned. Jian wished Admiral Qiang or Xiao would speak up in his defense. Unfortunately, like everyone else, they were afraid of the Chairman. Maybe they were also afraid of Deng Fong. In that moment, Jian realized that he must lead the other two, and to lead them, he would have to persuade the old man in the wheelchair.
“Sir, if I may,” Jian said, “I’d like to point out the example of Cheng Ho.” He knew the Chairman loved the history of Cheng Ho. The dictator kept a large model of one of the medieval sailing ships on the bottom floor of the Politburo Building.
Cheng Ho had been an admiral in Chinese history. He had explored the Indian Ocean and the eastern coast of Africa several decades before the Europeans crawled down the African coast in the other direction. Cheng Ho’s ships and fleet had been huge, especially when compared to the Portuguese ships of the day. Due to Chinese inwardness and other political factors, the emperor recalled Cheng Ho and forbade further marine exploration. Thus, the Europeans had “discovered” and eventually conquered the East instead of the East discovering the West.
Deng laughed. It was a triumphant sound. He glanced at the Chairman. “I believe that our Agricultural Minister has become unhinged. What does medieval history have to do with blowing up oil wells or hoping to start a nuclear war?”
“You are incorrect,” Jian said. “The oil rig was destroyed in order to strengthen China’s hand.”
“Do you believe we are fools?” Deng said. “You did it to sabotage my talks. Can you truly think the Americans will back down as we destroy their oil industry? If you want historical examples, I will give you one from the last century: Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and thereby brought about their empire’s destruction.”
“Are you so afraid of the Americans that you fear they will destroy China?” Jian asked.
Xiao gave another of his nearly imperceptible nods of encouragement.
If only the Police Minister would speak openly, leaving out any of his fantastical nonsense, Jian thought.
“Once the Americans discover we destroyed the platform,” Deng said, “they may begin destroying our offshore wells in turn.”
“Our navy is superior to the deteriorated American Fleet,” Jian said. “If they dared such attacks, we would hunt down their ships and sink them on sight.”
“You are quite wrong,” Deng said. “Study history. No English-speaking nation has lost a naval war in five hundred years.”
Admiral Qiang frowned as he began to shake his head.
Xiao’s nostrils flared.
Seeing these things, Jian asked in seeming disbelief, “Do you truly pour such contempt upon the Chinese Navy?”
“It is not a matter of contempt,” Deng said. “Reality must guide us. American submarines are still better than ours. Yes, the Debt Depression and secessionist unrest has hurt them. Their defense expenditures are but a ghost of their former outlays. But their navy is still formidable, quite possibly a match for ours.”
http://www.amazon.com/Invasion-Cali...eywords=invasion+california#reader_B00AAKQX10
Book Description
Publication Date:November 19, 2012
The invasion of California has begun, threatening to trigger World War III.
Greater China and its South American allies control Mexico, and their armies are poised on the Rio Grande, ready for the next phase of the North American conquest.
It is 2039. The Chinese are launching their secret weapon against the American border fortifications. At the same time, an amphibious fleet steams toward San Francisco. The Chinese have formed the Pan Asian Alliance and signed a war-pact with the South American Federation. Glacial cooling has brought the Earth to the brink of starvation. Now, U.S. soil is the most valuable commodity in the world, and the aggressor powers plan to divide it amongst themselves.
America is down but she is not out. The military has some deadly surprises for the invaders, but it may not be enough. Enemy wave assaults, vast armor battles and new drone fighters turn the war into a seething cauldron of mass destruction.
INVASION: CALIFORNIA is a disturbing and controversial technothriller vast in scope, written by bestselling author Vaughn Heppner.
Novels by Vaughn Heppner
Invasion: Alaska
Accelerated
I, Weapon
Visit www.Vaughnheppner.com for more information.
Invasion: California
(Invasion America Series)
by Vaughn Heppner
“All war is based on deception.”
-- From: The Art of War, by Sun Tzu (c. 544-496 B.C.)
Copyright © 2012 by the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
Preface
Invasion: California is a story about disastrous events. It postulates a world teetering on the brink of starvation due to glacial cooling.
It is a “what if” story. What if the farmable land in the world shrank dramatically, and what if American earth became one of the most precious commodities left? What if other countries—led by Greater China and its Pan-Asian Alliance—decided it was going to conquer U.S. soil? Lastly, what if America no longer dominated world affairs due to a sovereign debt depression and other, mostly self-inflicted, wounds?
Interestingly, there is a historical precedent for continental-sized conquest fought with the latest technology. The Third Reich made the attempt a little over seventy years ago in World War II.
At the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Germany set out to conquer European Russian. In terms of depth, the final objectives were just short of the Ural Mountains. In America, that would be the distance from the East Coast to Kansas City, Missouri.
The Germans’ gigantic conquest began along a 1,720-mile front stretching from the Barents Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. Again, in American terms, that would be from the northern border of Maine all the way down to the southern tip of Florida.
The Germans invaded with approximately three million soldiers, while the Russians defended in the theater with slightly fewer. By 1943, Germany fielded almost four million troops there, while Russia had put over 6.7 million soldiers in place. Incredible as it may seem, by war’s end, the Russians had lost 14.7 million military dead. Some people estimate that their total dead and missing—military and civilian—was 35 million. Those are horrifying numbers, beginning to sound like nuclear war casualties.
What does any of that have to do with Invasion: California?In attempting to envision foreign powers invading North America, I used as one of my guides the titanic conflict of World War II, particularly between Germany and Soviet Russia. I suspect that in a future war of such scale, millions of soldiers would march to battle once again.
Invasion: California is fiction about a future I hope none of us ever has to face. Nevertheless, if present trends continue…who knows what will happen by 2039.
Timeline to War
1997: The British return Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China.
2011: China reviews its one-child per family policy begun in 1978 and decides to continue it. This increasingly creates an overabundance of boys as families abort a higher percentage of girls.
2012: China carries much of the U.S. National Debt and continues to sell America a vast surplus of finished goods.
2016: The American banking system and stock market crashes as the Chinese unload their U.S. Bonds. The ripple effect creates the Sovereign Debt Depression throughout the world.
2017: Siberia secedes from a bankrupt Russia.
2018: Scientists detect the beginning of a new glacial period that is similar to the chilly temperatures that occurred during the Black Death period of the Middle Ages.
2019: The Marriage Act is passed. As the Chinese men greatly outnumber the women, special government permits are needed before a man is allowed to marry a woman.
2020: Due to new glaciation, there are repeated low yields and crop failures in China and elsewhere. It brings severe political unrest to an already economically destabilized world.
2021: An expansion-minded Socialist-Nationalist government emerges in China. It demands that Siberia return the Great Northeastern Area stolen during Tsarist times. It also renews calls for reunification with Taiwan.
2022: The Sovereign Debt Depression—and an ongoing civil war in Mexico—create political turmoil in America, particularly in the Southwest. There is an increase in terrorism, secessionist movements and a plummeting Federal budget. All American military forces return home as the U.S. grows isolationist.
2023: The Mukden Incident sparks the Sino-Siberian War. Chinese armies invade. The ailing Russian government ignores Siberian cries for military aid. America’s new isolationism prevents any overseas interference.
Modernized equipment and an excessive pool of recruits eager to win marriage permits bring swift victory to Chinese arms over Siberia. It annexes the Great Northeastern Area. Siberia becomes a client state.
2024: Aggressive posturing and long-range aircraft stationed on the Chinese coast cause the aging U.S. Fleet to retreat from Taiwan. China invades and captures Taiwan. Its navy now rivals the shrunken USN.
2026: Newly discovered deep oilfields in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska prove among the world’s largest.
2027: The civil war in Mexico worsens. The bulk of America’s Homeland Security Forces now stand guard on the Rio Grande.
2028: The continuing modernization of the oil industry in Siberia, the Great Northeastern Area and in the South China Sea turns Greater China into the largest oil-producing nation in the world. China begins to dictate OPEC policies.
2030: The cooling trend worsens, bringing record winter temperatures. New energy sources cannot keep pace with increasing demand. American energy hunger sweeps away the last environmental concerns. All possible energy sources are exploited.
2031: Harsher weather patterns and growing world population causes greater food rationing in more countries. The main grain exporting nations—Canada, America, Argentina and Australia—form a union along similar lines as OPEC. China warns it may cut America off from all oil supplies unless it is given priority status for grain shipments.
2032: China experiences the worst rice harvest of the Twenty-first century. New rationing laws are instituted. Internal unrest rises to dangerous levels as Party officials seek new food sources. Invasion: Alaska. The Chinese attack in order to cut off America’s main oil source and force the U.S. into favorable food-for-oil trades.
After the armistice, there is growing world furor over the nuclear-tipped torpedoes used in the Alaskan War. Greater China places harsh economic sanctions on the U.S. The German Dominion, the Brazilian-led South American Federation and the Iranian Hegemony soon follow suit.
2033: The Mexican civil war reignites. The SNP—the Socialist-Nationalist Party—seeks Chinese help. Chinese military advisors arrive.
Glacial cooling continues to devastate worldwide crop yields. Led by Brazil and backed by Greater China, the South American Federation declares war on Argentina, a Grain Union member.
2034: Hostilities end with Buenos Aires’s capture by Brazilian forces. Argentina leaves the Grain Union and joins the South American Federation.
Continuing sanctions cripple U.S. recovery efforts. Domestic terrorism and secessionist threats increase as political turmoil worsens—the Democrats and Republicans demonize each other, bringing gridlock.
With increasing Chinese military support, the SNP rapidly gains ground in the Mexican Civil War.
2035: Colonel Cesar Valdez seeks American assistance and safe havens for his Free Mexico Army. Mexican President Felipe asks for greater Chinese assistance. China accelerates its troop buildup in Mexico.
Continuing poor crop yields and increasing starvation leads to the creation of the Pan Asian Alliance (PAA). This includes Greater China and most of Southeast Asia. Military preparations are begun for an Australian Invasion.
Hawaii now erupts with racial violence. The Hawaiian Nativist Party seeks independence from “supremacist” America.
2036: China’s Thirteen Demands are read in the U.N. Amid the worsening glaciation, they find massive appeal. Demand # 1: America and its Grain Union allies must distribute their abundance equally throughout the world. Demand #2: America must accept third party nutrition inspectors at its granaries and warehouses.
The Hawaiian rebel government seeks foreign help. China sends an invasion fleet. America sends its carriers. The Chinese launch a surprise attack on American satellites and other space assets, combining it with a massive cyber-assault on the U.S. Crippled by the cyber-attack on their datalinks, the American fleet is destroyed in the Battle of Oahu.
General Sims—the former Joint Forces Commander in Alaska during the Chinese invasion—runs as an Independent and wins the Presidency. He signs the Non-Nuclear Use Treaty, pledging that America will never again use nuclear weapons first. He also agrees to begin food shipments through the Chinese-dominated U.N. Some economic sanctions against America are lifted. At the same time, the President declares a state of emergency and begins construction of the Rio Grande Defensive Line due to the 700,000 PAA troops in Mexico.
2037: Seeking to escape forced induction into the South American Federation, the Cuban dictator asks for German Dominion military assistance. The first GD airmobile brigade arrives in Cuba.
Terrorists detonate a low-yield nuclear weapon in Silicon Valley, destroying much of the critical American high-technology center. Evidence points to Chinese involvement.
By the end of the year, the PAA’s Mexico-occupation troops number two and a half million. Free Mexico Army assassins kill Mexican President Felipe.
2038: Claiming American provocations, China accelerates its troop buildup. Over four million soldiers occupy Mexico. The first South American Federation troops arrive.
President Sims orders a preemptive satellite assault, using the strategic ABM lasers to knock out all foreign objects that enter American space. He cuts off all grain tribute to the U.N.
The PAA, the SAF and the GD sign a secret accord against America.
2039: Nearly six million PAA troops occupy Mexico, combined with three million SAF troops. The GD moves the bulk of its long-range hovers into Cuba.
-1-
The Stumble
SAN JUAN BASE, MEXICO
The stumble into war began in the bedroom of Colonel Peng of the Fifth Transport Division. He lay naked on top of Donna Cruz, a Mexican teenager with raven-colored hair and the sensual moves of a serpent. The moment of ecstasy quickly arrived and Peng cried out in release.
He rolled off her, yawned and closed his eyes. No wonder soldiers volunteered for duty in Mexico. Yes, war loomed, but the abundance of willing and attractive females in this land was truly staggering. Peng had never won a marriage permit as Chinese law dictated. He wondered if that had been a mistake.
“Colonel?” the girl asked. “Are you asleep?”
He opened his eyes. She sat beside him. What marvelous breasts and such a flat stomach with its outie bellybutton. Oh. The flatness of the stomach was because she seldom had enough to eat.
The rationing in Mexico was strict. The country’s painfully-grown crops first fed the “invited” soldiers protecting the Socialist-Nationalist Revolution. That meant nearly ten million mouths, ten million hungry foreigners. Afterward, the Mexican government employees took precedence, the Mexican Home Army and then munitions workers. Every Mexican possessed a ration card. Peng’s young temptress had a third class card, no doubt why she supplemented her lifestyle as his girlfriend.
Does she have other “boyfriends?”
“Colonel?” she asked again.
It was atrocious Chinese, but at least she could speak it. Actually, it was much better than most Mexicans achieved.
Peng yawned, idly wondering why he became so sleepy after doing it.
“Do you have a present for me, Colonel?” she asked, smiling as she batted her eyelashes.
“Yes. It’s in the third drawer, my dear. I have a package for you. Why don’t you get it?”
She scooted off the bed. Peng raised his head to examine her wonderful butt. It swayed seductively as she padded across the floor. Only in Mexico could he have won such a beauty.
She opened the third drawer and squealed with delight, taking out a large package wrapped in red paper.
“It’s heavy,” she said.
“I have sausages, whiskey for your father and other delicacies for you. There are also several hundred pesos within.”
“You are kind to me.”
He closed his eyes and lay back. Kindness had nothing to do with it. He was a supply officer and had learned a long time ago that spreading delicacies around solved many problems, including a loveless life. Let the fighters win glory on the battlefield. He would use his position to “buy” what he needed.
“I can return four days from now,” she said. It was a long bicycle ride from Mexico City where she lived. He had been thinking about purchasing a room for her nearby. Many officers did that, but Peng had been saving his money, sending it to his aging mother in China.
Peng smiled as he became increasingly sleepy. Four days from now and he would neigh like a stallion as he enjoyed another night with this amazing creature. Yes, four days and—he frowned.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
Through the mattress, he felt her climb back onto the bed. Her warm hands rubbed his chest. She always told him how she loved his smooth skin. It wasn’t hairy like a gorilla.
“I’m going to be busy four days from now,” Peng told her.
“Oh,” she pouted, taking away her hands.
Peng yawned. It was getting hard to stay awake. “I’m going to be very busy moving Blue Swan. Another shipment arrives, from Japan this time.”
“Couldn’t you get away for just a little while?” she asked. “I really want to see you again, Colonel.”
Peng smiled faintly. The girl was amazing in bed but otherwise unimaginative. She never seemed to understand he had tasks to perform.
“No, my dear,” he mumbled, beginning to fade away. “I have to oversee everything.” She probably couldn’t understand that. “Blue Swan is critical,” he explained. “It is the can opener that will pry apart American defenses. It would be my death to slip away to see you, delightful as that would be. I…”
Colonel Peng’s head tilted until his right cheek sank against the pillow. He drifted to sleep. Thus he never saw Donna Cruz stare at him in amazement.
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
The next night, Daniel Cruz stared bleary-eyed at his teenaged daughter. She paraded through their tiny living room in a red dress. She was stunning, his daughter. It amazed Daniel that he had ever produced such a pretty girl with such long, raven hair.
“Where did you find the money to buy that?” he asked.
She frowned.
It hurt Daniel’s heart to see that. He should have told her how beautiful she looked. It’s what he would have told his wife. She had died three years ago. Everything had gone sour afterward: his wife dying and his daughter learning to whore herself out to the Chinese. He knew where she’d “earned” the money to buy a red dress like that.
Daniel picked up a glass, swirling the brown-colored whiskey at the bottom. He sipped, letting the alcohol slide down his throat. A moment later, the pleasant burn and the numbing in his mind began. This was good whiskey, better than he’d had in a long time.
“You’re pretty,” he muttered.
Donna swirled on her toes. She had such slender legs, perfectly muscled from all the bicycling she did. Wherever she rode, Daniel knew his daughter turned heads.
“Do you sleep with them?” he asked bitterly.
Anger flashed in her eyes. She strode to the nightstand and grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck. “I brought you this! Drink it and drown your sorrows. But do not ask me what I do as if you’re a shocked priest. You work for them, Papa! I work for them! So do not judge me.”
Daniel wanted to surge up and slap her across the face. He had bad knees, hobbling like an old man wherever he went. Bicycling to the office every day only made his knees worse. They popped and crackled horribly when he pedaled. He held out his glass to her, deciding silence would be his whip.
She poured, slammed the bottle onto the nightstand and strode across the living room. Before leaving, she whirled around. “You should thank me and you should thank Colonel Peng for his generous gifts.”
Daniel sipped whiskey, looking away. He would ignore her. She knew better; thus, he would let her own conscience whip her.
“The colonel is an important man!” she declared.
Daniel snorted. They were always important.
“He’s in charge of Blue Swan,” Donna said.
“Birds?” asked Daniel, letting his voice drip with mockery.
“No! Blue Swan is the can opener that will pry apart the American defenses.”
Daniel’s head swung around. With the whiskey in him, it felt like a long journey. He stared at Donna, standing there so fiery, with her fists on her hips.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“They’re from Japan,” she declared. “He’s moving them. He is very important, Papa, and he loves me.”
Daniel blinked heavy eyelids. He knew this Colonel Peng. His office in the city had dealings with Chinese supply, in charge of traffic control. Daniel worked in the Mexican government, what had become the puppet régime for the foreigners. Once he had believed in the SNP. Now his wife was dead and his daughter slept with the enemy. She had become little more than a whore. Even though he loved her dearly, he recognized the truth. Because he made too little money and drank too much, he couldn’t give her what she needed and had to take what she gave.
“Drink your whiskey,” she said, interpreting his silence the wrong way.
“Donna,” he whispered.
She ran from the living room. Seconds later, the front door slammed as she fled the apartment.
Daniel stared at the glass with the brown-colored whiskey. It was Japanese, too, the alcohol. What his daughter had just told him…if it was true…
He grabbed the bottle from the nightstand and as carefully as possible, he poured the whiskey in his glass back where it belonged. A few drops spilled onto the carpet, but that couldn’t be helped. He corked the bottle, set it on the nightstand and went to the fridge. He drew two bottled waters, opening the first and beginning to guzzle. Tomorrow, he needed to be as sober as possible.
Afterward and in a daze, he went to bed. Sleep proved difficult. Five times, he woke up, shuffled to the bathroom and dribbled into the toilet. He hated being old.
In the morning he ate a tasteless burrito, shaved his face with a shaking hand and chose his cleanest uniform.
He pedaled through the city, listening to his knees crackle and pop. He had to ride slowly; otherwise, the pain became too intense. Thousands pedaled with him, hordes on two wheels. At a thirty-story glass tower, Daniel parked his bike in an outer rack, locking it with a chain.
He took an elevator to the twelfth floor. There he worked diligently in his office, only later finding an excuse to head to the fourteenth floor and speak there with Pedro, who was in charge of scheduled routes in the countryside. Pedro was an old friend from elementary school, so many decades ago.
In a storeroom with a single bulb in the ceiling they played checkers. The ivory pieces had an unusual heft to them and were always cool to the touch. The design etched onto the backs showed the ancient Castilian crown from the old country. The ivory pieces came from Daniel’s grandfather, inherited at his death. Pedro and Daniel usually played around this time.
After moving a piece, Daniel looked up and told Pedro, “I had forgotten, my friend, that you introduced me to my wife.”
“That was long ago,” Pedro said as he eyed the board.
“Hmm. It is our anniversary today.” That was a lie, but Pedro would never know. “Since my wife is gone, I wanted to celebrate with someone. Would you share this with me?” Daniel asked. He produced the whiskey bottle, which was three-fifths full.
Pedro looked up and his eyes widened. He grinned. He had a silver-colored crown among his yellowed teeth. Pedro was an alcoholic, although he’d never admitted that to anyone, certainly not to himself. “Just a quick sip, si?” Pedro asked.
“Yes, a quick one,” Daniel agreed.
A half hour later, the bottle was empty, Pedro having consumed most of it.
“Oh,” Daniel said, as he shelved the game in its hiding spot. “I just remembered. Senor Franco is planning a surprise inspection today.”
“You lie!” Pedro said.
“I’m only wish it were so.”
“He’ll smell the whiskey on me.”
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Daniel said. “If Franco is coming, I must leave for an early lunch.”
“Yes, yes, an excellent idea,” Pedro said.
The two men departed from the storeroom. Pedro hurried to his office down the hall. Daniel went in the other direction, turned the corner and waited. After ten minutes had passed, Daniel headed for Pedro’s office. Upon his entrance the secretary looked up, an old lady whose son, Senor Franco, ran the department.
“I forgot my keys in Pedro’s office,” Daniel said. He meant the keys to his bike-chain and apartment.
Mrs. Franco indicated that he could go in and retrieve his keys.
Daniel entered the office, leaving the door ajar so she wouldn’t become suspicious. Despite her inquisitive nature, old Mrs. Franco was absent-minded and would likely forget about him soon. She was playing a computer game and she often spent hours at it, building her internet farm.
After a short wait and taking a deep breath, Daniel sat down at Pedro’s desk. The swivel chair creaked and Daniel paused, but Mrs. Franco did not come in to investigate.
As he’d hoped, Pedro’s computer was still on. Daniel pressed a key and the screen awoke. For the next twenty minutes, Daniel examined scheduled route shutdowns. Pedro was in charge of them, meaning certain routes and roads were closed to civilian and sometimes to Mexican Home Army usage. During those times the Chinese Army used the roads and routes, often for “secret” convoys.
Daniel searched, and he discovered a route from the main port at Baja Bay to the First Front on the Californian-Mexican border. The route used a code word. From experience, Daniel knew the Chinese often used the main article being ferried as the code. This route word or code was “Blue Swan.”
Daniel’s heart thudded. According to Donna, this was a secret weapon, one critical to smashing the vaunted American defenses on the border.
With shaking hands, Daniel took out a pencil and paper, copying the route information. Several minutes later, he shut off the computer, said good-bye to Mrs. Franco and headed to his office one floor down.
He would compose a carefully worded report and leave it at a letter-drop near Santa Anna Park. His control was a Swiss national in the ambassador’s office. Daniel believed the man was actually a CIA case officer. Whoever he was, the man paid well for good information, which helped Daniel buy cheap whiskey. More importantly, with this he hoped to hurt the Chinese, to strike back at the foreigners who had corrupted his beautiful young daughter.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Anna Chen rubbed her eyes. They were gritty from too much reading and too little sleep. She sat in front of an e-reader in a cubicle in the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the analysts working the night shift.
She had come down a long way in the world since President Clark’s reelection defeat after the Alaskan War seven long years ago. From working on the President’s staff Anna had fallen into unemployment. This was due to her membership in a new undesirable caste in America: those of half-Chinese ancestry. It had been a rude shock.
Years ago, she had written the tome on the Chinese: Socialist-National China. It had been a bestseller, had won her a professorship at Harvard and then a spot on President Clark’s staff. None of that mattered now. She was half-Chinese. In besieged America that made her suspect. It didn’t help that Tanaka—her former bodyguard/lover—had died defending her in Obama Park. Tanaka had killed three muggers, shooting two in the head and breaking the neck of the third. The fourth had stepped out from behind a bush, shot Tanaka in the back and stolen Anna’s purse.
Sitting in her CIA cubicle, Anna rubbed her eyes harder, blinked several times and concentrated on the reports. A lamp provided light and several computer scrolls waited for her use. If there was anything in a report she didn’t understand, Anna looked it up.
Her life had spiraled from one tragedy to another. After her mother’s death, Anna had begun a blog on Chinese affairs, winning syndication on National News Internet (NNI). The mass Chinese cyber-assault three years ago in 2036 had ended that. The nuclear terrorist attack in Silicon Valley had ripened the latent Chinese racism into ugly fruit indeed. The only bright spot had been the election of President Sims. They said he was superstitious, in a baseball sort of way. Keep everything the same, if you could, when you won the big game. She had been in the government during the Alaskan War that Sims had won. Therefore, after gaining an interview with him, Anna had received employment with the CIA, as a lower grade analyst. It was better than unemployment and she was good at analyzing and interpreting data.
Anna sipped tea and leaned back so her chair squealed. She reached up and undid her hair. It was long and dark. She opened a drawer and took out a brush, letting the bristles run through the long strands.
She was seven years older since the Alaskan War. Yet she was still slender, keeping fit primarily because of her sparse diet and her pedal-power plan. In her apartment, she supplemented the energy requirement—provided by a nearby coal station—through stationary cycling. She also practiced the martial arts techniques Tanaka had taught her, which kept her amazingly limber.
She missed Tanaka. It was a hole in her heart. Would there ever be a man like him again for her?
Her brushing hand froze. Anna sat up, removed the brush from her hair and set it on the desk with a soft clunk. She concentrated on the report.
Clicking the e-reader, going back two pages, she noticed it came from Mexico City. From the beginning now, Anna read the report slowly. Was this right? The Chinese were moving a convoy to the front near the Californian border. The convoy carried Blue Swan.
“Blue Swan,” Anna whispered. “Where have I seen that before?”
She continued reading and wondered how this person code-named “Spartacus” had known “Blue Swan” was important to the Chinese. There was something missing in the report. She could feel it. It was rated “Yellow.” That meant it was considered third class and only slightly reliable.
Anna swiveled her chair and used a computer scroll’s touch screen. America was a land of great contrasts these days. Coal fed much of the nation’s energy needs and yet some places used the latest technology. Anna put in Spartacus’ name and read other reports written by him.
Why is this one coded “yellow?” Spartacus had proven reliable in the past.
Anna typed in “Blue Swan,” watching the words build on the screen. After typing the “n,” a little yellow note-symbol appeared in the left-hand corner. She moved the cursor over the “note” and clicked. Hmm, it was a reference saying “Blue Swan” concerned Chinese R&D. Where had the note originated?
She attempted to find out. Seconds later, her screen flashed red and the words appeared, sorry, classification exceeds user clearance level.
Anna sat back, picked up her teacup, sipped and grimaced. The tea had become cool. She liked hers hot.
So, what do I do? Let this go or make waves trying to find out what this “Blue Swan” is?
Anna sat staring at the e-reader. Slowly, she clicked back to the beginning of the report. She wished Spartacus had been more honest and put in exactly how he’d come to suspect Blue Swan.
How important is this?
If it proved to be insignificant, eyes might raise and suspicions become whetted. Why did the half-Chinese woman seek higher clearance? Her position in the CIA was tenuous at best.
“I’m an American,” Anna whispered to herself. “This is my country.” Each person had to fight his or her personal battles in life. Some had physical ailments, others fought psychological problems and some had to walk uphill against racism or ageism. She had found it better to do and struggle than to accept these limitations.
Standing, blowing out her checks, Anna picked up the e-reader and headed for her boss’s office. She passed others in their cubicles, reading reports, typing or eating a snack. A few looked up. Two nodded a greeting.
Anna reached the door, hesitated and let her delicate knuckles rap against wood.
“Enter,” a man said. Ed Johnson was the chief analyst of the nightshift. He had gray hair and wore a white shirt and tie, one of the old guard. She had heard others say before that Johnson didn’t like her.
“Yes?” Johnson asked, scowling up at her.
Anna hesitated.
Johnson’s scowl grew, and he eyed her up and down.
Anna felt soiled by it, remembering how Tanaka’s killer had looked her up and down that night in the park. With the smoking gun in his hand—the one that had shot Tanaka in the back—the murderer had stepped up and snatched her purse. His eyes had lingered hungrily. She’d seen his desire to rape. It had frozen her. For months afterward, she had stood before a full-length mirror at home, practicing what she should have done.
At his desk, Ed Johnson scowled, eyeing her as if she was a piece of meat to devour. She wasn’t going to accept it.
With a force that surprised her, Anna slapped the e-reader onto Johnson’s desk. “I’d like you to read this,” she said.
His gray eyebrows lifted. Maybe he hadn’t expected such forcefulness. He took the e-reader and went through the report. When he was done, he set the e-reader down, turned it to face her and shoved it across the desk to her.
“Did you see the reporter’s grade?” he asked.
“Third, yes,” she said. Anna explained about the “Blue Swan” reference to Chinese R&D and that its classification was higher than her clearance.
“What am I supposed to do about it?” Johnson asked.
“Give me higher clearance so I can properly analyze the data.”
He folded his thick fingers together, staring at her. He shook his head. “I can’t do that, Ms. Chen.”
“Then phone someone who can.”
“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”
“I’m trying to do what’s best for my country. I think this could be important. Obviously, Spartacus left out a critical piece of information. It’s the R&D information that I need to see in order to make a better-informed judgment on what he is telling us. This is time-sensitive data.”
Johnson’s scowl intensified, and he nodded now. “You’re gambling. You have the guts to back up your gamble, to barge in here and try to face me down. Okay, little girl, I call and raise your stakes. You want to burn yourself, go right ahead.”
Ed Johnson, Chief CIA Analyst of the nightshift, put a call through to his superior. He told him the pertinent information, nodded, saying “yes, sir,” and handed the phone to Anna.
She found herself talking to the Director himself. Anna stared at Johnson. He grinned like a shark.
“I’m hope this is important,” the Director said. “Sleep is a precious commodity, and Johnson’s call has just stolen some of mine.”
“Yes, sir,” Anna said. She explained the situation once again.
“Anna Chen,” the Director said, “the Anna Chen on Clark’s staff, the one who tried to warn him about the Alaskan Invasion?”
“Yes, sir,” Anna said.
“I’ve read your file. You have good instincts. Hand the phone back to Johnson.”
Anna did.
Johnson listened, and his eyebrows thundered. “Yes, sir,” he said, hanging up afterward.
“Round one goes to you, Ms. Chen,” Johnson said. “You have provisional clearance until I say otherwise. I’m adding the condition that you can only look at it here with me.”
Soon, in a chair to the side, Anna read the Chinese R&D report. Johnson informed her it came from the Yuan Ring, a spy high in the Chinese military. The informant didn’t know what “Blue Swan” was specifically, but it was supposed to be a weapon of special significance against American defenses.
Anna looked up. “Sir, I think you’d better listen to what I have to say.”
“Is that so?” Johnson asked.
“If you don’t think so,” she said, “call up the Director again.”
Johnson decided to listen to Anna. Afterward, he told her, “Are you sure you want to raise the stakes again?”
“Aren’t you?” she countered.
Johnson shrugged, and he called the Director. The Director listened to Anna and then asked to speak to Johnson. Shortly thereafter, two security officers escorted Anna to a waiting car. They drove to Special Operations Command (SOCOM) so Anna could speak to General Ochoa. All American commandos fell under his orders. That included Green Berets, Rangers, Delta, SEALs, Air Commandos, Psyops, and Marine, Force Recon and Civil Affairs and special aviation units.
Rain struck the windshield of Anna’s car. The water distorted the street lights shining into the darkened vehicle as the tires hissed over wet pavement. One of the security officials drove, allowing Anna to read more about the Yuan Spy Ring in Beijing. After speaking with the Director a second time, she’d gained a higher security clearance.
The clock was ticking on Spartacus’ data and the Director wanted to make a stab at finding out what made “Blue Swan” so important.
BAJA PENINSULA, MEXICO
In the swelter of an unusually hot Mexican night, Paul Kavanagh’s shoulders ached because of his heavy rucksack. His thighs burned as he stormed up a stony hill. With the ruck, special weapons, extra ammo, canteens and equipment, he lugged over eighty-seven pounds. It had been a grueling march since the insertion, sixteen miles of rough terrain and a Chinese patrol they’d had to avoid.
I’m getting too old for this.
The stars shone like hot gems, made more prominent by the moon’s absence. The air was raw going down Paul’s throat and sweat kept trickling under his night vision goggles. He lifted the device and wiped his stinging eyes.
Because of that, Paul tripped over a hidden rock. He stumbled, his equipment clattering, and he went to one knee at the top of the hill. He sucked air and shifted his rucksack, trying to ease the straps. Putting the goggles back over his eyes, he studied the situation. The twisting ribbon of blacktop down there was empty. The road snaked past boulders and a parallel ditch.
Had the Chinese convoy already come and gone?
This felt too much like Hawaii three years ago, which had been a series of disasters and dead commandos. Paul had the dubious honor of being one of the last Americans to slip away from the islands. He’d fled while under Chinese machine gun fire, tracers slapping the water as he gunned their inflatable over an incoming wave. Lieutenant Diggs had pitched overboard, leaving only two of them to reach the waiting submarine three miles offshore.
As Paul knelt on the Mexican hill, his lips peeled back, revealing a chip in the right-hand upper front tooth. He’d gotten that in Hawaii while banging his face against a rock. With his short blond hair and angular features, it gave him a wolfish cast. Despite his years, he still had broad shoulders and trim hips. In his youth he’d been a terror on the football field, slamming running backs and receivers with bone-crushing force. As he knelt, Paul listened for the enemy, straining, cocking his head.
He heard something in the distance that could have been a big engine. Rocks and boulders littered these hills, with crooked trees and yellow grass. If he could already hear the Chinese convoy—
Paul twisted around. William Lee moved up the hill. He belonged to the 75th Ranger Regiment and was the other American on the mission, although neither Paul nor Lee was in uniform. It meant if captured they could be shot as spies or saboteurs, which Paul figured would never happen. If they survived a firefight, Chinese Intelligence would torture them until they’d extracted every piece of useful information from their brutalized bodies.
Because of that, their CIA officer—who remained safely in the States—had given each of them a cyanide capsule. Lee had asked for a false tooth to hold his, explaining that he might be knocked unconscious during a firefight. The Chinese would confiscate the capsule, therefore, before he could swallow it. Paul had quietly accepted his cyanide, pocketing it and later crushing the capsule with his boot heel on the sidewalk outside the mess hall.
Paul had promised his wife Cheri a long time ago that he would come home to her no matter what happened. It was the only way she had agreed to his reenlistment with the Marines after Alaska. Paul had also vowed after Hawaii that he was going to die in bed of old age. He’d seen too many good men butchered on the battlefield. There was nothing heroic about it, just the ugly mutilation of flesh and the pulverizing of bones. His vows meant he couldn’t die here on this mission. He certainly couldn’t take his own life.
He snorted bitterly. If only it was that easy. Likely, the vows meant he had cursed himself to a young and violent death. Well, not so young, but brutal, he was certain.
A Mexican woman followed Lee. She was thin like the others and she carried a heavy pack like them too. They were guerillas of Colonel Valdez’s Free Mexico Army. The girl, the woman, she was the colonel’s daughter, Maria, a legend among the resistance. That she was here showed the importance of the mission. The CIA officer had objected via satellite phone, saying it would be a terrible propaganda blow is she died or was captured. Besides, the mission called for Colonel Valdez’s best men, not his daughter.
If they wanted the best, why am I here?
Paul knew the answer, but he didn’t buy it. Maria was here because she believed in the romance of her existence, in the great cause. She was also here because according to Colonel Valdez she had the best small unit tactical mind of anyone in his army. Calling these ragtag people Paul had seen an army was stretching it. They were all so thin.
It was due to the Chinese occupation. Those like Maria and her six guerillas possessed fifth-class cards, if they owned a card at all. It meant they ate enough to keep breathing, but moving or working, that was another matter.
The world was starving to death due to glaciation. Because of it, the population was knocking on America’s door, demanding food.
Lee reached the top of the hill and crouched beside Paul. He mopped sweat with his sleeve and his nostrils made whistling noises. Lee was too tough to open his mouth and pant, at least beside a Marine who had beaten him up the hill.
William Lee, aka “Wolverine” to his 75th Ranger Regiment buddies. He was shorter than Paul and built like a pit bull. Those muscles were all useful, even the ones bunched on the side of his jaw. In Hawaii, Lee had bitten off the nose of a White Tiger commando, giving Lee time to draw his knife and gut the Chinese killer.
Probably because of his fanatical attitudes, Lee consistently produced results. In Hawaii, he had been the sole survivor of the “Night of the Generals.” It had been a daring mission behind enemy lines, putting five Rangers of Chinese extraction into a conference room of high-ranking enemy commanders. All the generals had died, according to Lee, one bayoneted in the throat. Since only Lee had made it back, his version of the story had become official history.
Paul and Lee were here because of General Ochoa, who ran SOCOM. Ochoa believed in an old pro football adage: get big playmakers on your team, men who excel under pressure during playoff or Super Bowl performances and let them play a lot. Guided by his theorem, Ochoa had handpicked Paul and Lee for this off-the-cuff mission.
“You two have achieved the biggest successes to date. Paul, you helped slow the enemy on the North Slope of Alaska. And Lee, killing those Chinese generals in Hawaii—it makes me smile every time I think about you sticking one of those bastards in the throat. Your task this time is straightforward. We need to find out what ‘Blue Swan’ is and why the Chinese think it’s so important. You’re going into Mexico and getting our country a Blue Swan to study.”
As they crouched on the dark hilltop in Mexico, Lee’s whistling lessened. Paul hoisted his rucksack higher on his shoulders so the straps eased some of their pressure.
Lee leaned forward like an eager bloodhound. “I hear them,” he said, meaning the Chinese.
“Be good to get an air-visual,” Paul said, “and know how they’re deployed.”
“Next you’ll be asking for a quad to drive down to the road.”
“Better get going,” Paul said.
Lee grunted as he forced himself upright. Gripping his rucksack’s straps, he began stiff-legged down the hill.
Paul could hear the convoy easily now, the roar of approaching trucks. The Chinese were coming, the Chinese who ran Mexico with an iron fist, the Chinese who had invaded Alaska seven years ago and swept every American satellite from space three years ago and who had launched a cyber-attack on his country. The U.S. had never been the same since.
Maria Valdez climbed beside him, crouching onto one knee. Sweat streaked her thin face. She never wore a helmet or a hat and she’d tied her long dark hair into a ponytail. She was pretty with those intense black eyes, but she never smiled and her voice was like a whiplash. She panted with an open mouth. In that regard, she wasn’t proud like Lee. Her eyes narrowed and she turned to Paul.
“They’re almost here,” she said.
The mission had called for plenty of time to deploy. But there had been a patrol in the way. The nine of them had detoured, eating up too much precious time.
Thinking about it made Paul weary. If they couldn’t even get this part of it right, he doubted the extraction would work.
Maria looked back the way she’d climbed. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, “Jose, Lupe, Jorge, hurry! Set up the machine gun.”
She meant the .50 caliber Browning. She would man it, as she was the best shot among the guerillas.
“Luis, Benito and Freddy,” she said, “get your RPGs ready. I want you in the ditch with the Marine.”
The six guerillas toiled up the hill. Although thin and malnourished, they were hard-eyed partisans, Mexicans dedicated to throwing off the hated oppressor. Each of them had his own harrowing tale of abuse, of soul-crushing horror that usually involved a lost wife, daughter or sister, sometimes all three. The enemy avidly sought female companions, as their country had the worst man-to-woman imbalance in the world. More than one U.S. commentator said the Chinese lust for conquest was simply a primal urge belonging to the Stone Age—a hunt for wives. The Chinese had an ironclad law, permitting a family a single child only. Too many of them yearned for a male offspring, meaning they aborted the girls, the reason for the great imbalance.
Maria turned back to Paul, blowing her breath in his face. It smelled of sunflower seeds. She had littered the spent shells on the way here like an old time baseball player.
“We must kill every one of them,” Maria said, with her eyes flashing as she spoke.
Paul cocked his head. He heard grinding gears. The big vehicles downshifted as they toiled uphill. General Ochoa’s people had chosen this location with care.
Kill every one of them.
Lee was two-thirds of the way down the hill. The Ranger had a custom-built mine to deploy. He had two, but by the sounds, Lee would be lucky to get one emplaced.
“Over there,” Paul said, pointing halfway down the hill. “That position will give you—”
“I know where to put my machine gun!” Maria snapped.
Sure, lady. “Wait until Lee explodes the first mine before you begin firing,” Paul said.
Maria grabbed a fistful of his jacket and leaned close so their lips almost touched. “We’ve gone over the plan, amigo. Now you’re wasting time because you insist on treating me like a child. Go! Get set up so we can kill Chinese.”
This wasn’t about killing Chinese, although Paul didn’t tell Maria. “Good luck,” he said.
Maria sneered. “I am not a pagan. I do not desire luck.” She pulled a gold chain from around her neck with a small crucifix on the end. She kissed it. “I pray that Christos bless us against the atheist invaders. Tonight, let us send them all to Hell!”
“Works for me,” Paul said. He gripped his AT4, grunted as he stood and started down the hill.
Behind him, three guerillas followed, each of them carrying a Chinese RPG, long ago patterned off the successful Russian RPG-7. Maria and her team started for a position midway down the slope.
Lee had already dumped his rucksack in the ditch and knelt on the road. With a drill, he bored into the blacktop.
Can he get two mines in? We need two if we’re to have a hope.
Long yellow grass rustled against Paul’s jeans, while his boots scraped over half-buried rocks. He was dressed like a civilian, but it would fool no one. He’d declined regular body armor. It would give him away as an American but more importantly, it would rob him of mobility, maybe the ability to have made the 16-mile march this quickly.
In the darkness, gears ground once more as trucks downshifted yet again. It was an ominous sound. The convoy, the armored trucks and IFVs, were almost up into sight from their steep climb. In their entire route, it was steepest over that lip, meaning the convoy would be down to a crawl once they reached this location.
Paul raised his AT4 and broke into something resembling a sprint. The rucksack bounced up and down, causing brutal agony to his shoulders.
The AT4 was an 84mm unguided, portable, single-shot recoilless smoothbore weapon, a successor to the old LAW rocket. It weighed nearly fifteen pounds and his fired a HEAT projectile that could penetrate up to 16.5 inches of steel. The tactical trick tonight was going to be a simple one. The mine would blow the first vehicle. Paul’s AT4 would take out the last one, trapping the rest between them on the narrow road. The guerillas, Maria with the Browning, and U.S. Air Force drones would kill the rest. It was a KISS plan: Keep It Simple, Stupid. That was the best kind of plan in battle where the simple became difficult.
The air burned down Paul’s throat as he ran down the slope and his legs wobbled. Damn, he was tired. He needed to get into position. He—
The first Chinese vehicle climbed over the lip, appearing on the road below. It was an armored hover and by the mass of antenna on top, Paul bet it was a drone. The hover would be worthless off-road, but it had come quietly and faster than any truck or IFV. What a balls-up. Chinese convoy operations called for a drone crusher to lead. Everyone knew that. The planners had expected a crusher, not a hover.
No! Lee was still on the road. The hover likely had motion sensors, as much a robotic vehicle as an operator-driven drone.
Paul dove and he splayed his legs, dragging his feet, hoping to keep from tumbling. He grunted as the slanted ground slammed against him and his rucksack drove him down harder. He bounced and his steel-toed boots dragged in the dirt, kicking up stones.
Lee sprinted for the ditch. The Ranger pumped his arms as his feet flew. The hover’s heavy machine gun opened up with a stream of red tracers. Lee dove and jerked in the air as bullets ripped into him. The dive became a ragged tumble. He hit the ground and more tracers riddled his corpse, each one like a giant repeatedly slapping a doll, turning him over, and over.
Why had the Chinese brought a hover drone?
Paul didn’t have time to shake his head. The answer was too obvious. The mine was now out of play, as Lee had the activation-switch. Maybe one of the operators in Arizona could trigger it. First, the stealth drones would have to be in position. Paul hadn’t seen nor heard anything in the starry sky, nor had he communicated with the operators lately. Chinese detection gear was among the best and they therefore had decided to keep talk to a minimum.
Letting go of the AT4, Paul jerked quick-releases, shifted his shoulders and rolled the rucksack onto the ground. His fingers roved over pockets. He’d practiced this drill a thousand times. He ripped open a zipper and dragged out a laser-designator.
One of the guerillas crashed onto the ground beside him, readying a RPG. On the road, the drone raced for Lee’s corpse.
Cursing silently, Paul shoved the designator against his shoulder. It was built like a small carbine. He dug out a satellite phone and jammed it against his right ear. He punched the auto-dial, hearing it buzz.
“Echo one?” an operator asked.
The hover slowed as a port opened. Was it going to collect Lee? Before Paul could learn the answer, Lee rolled over so he faced his killer.
No way. Paul watched. It was ghastly. Lee smiled with red teeth. That’s blood. His mouth is full of blood.
Lee gripped something with both hands. His thumbs jammed down. The mine he’d planted in the road did its job as a coiled spring launched it airborne.
Paul thrust his face into the ground. An explosion rocked the world. Seconds later, debris rained with heavy pelting sounds.
After counting to three, Paul lifted his head and spotted the drone. It burned, flipped onto its side, a pile of junk now. Of Sergeant Lee of the 75th Ranger Regiment, there was no sign. In the end, Lee hadn’t needed the false tooth and cyanide capsule. The Ranger, he’d never have to worry about torture.
Paul blinked several times, hating the suddenness of the loss. Then he realized he heard heavy trucks braking, doing it out of sight. Did they stop on the steep part of the road just out of visual? He heard a clang. It sounded an awful lot like an IFV’s ramp crashing down. The shouts of Chinese infantry confirmed Paul’s suspicion.
The IEDs and the RPGs, together with the AT4 and Hellfire III missiles—
The first Chinese soldier climbed into view onto the road. He moved in that crouched-over manner of cautious soldiery. Helmet, body armor and cradling a QBZ-95 assault rifle—it used a caseless cartridge, the propellant a part of the bullet. That meant more ammo per magazine.
A second soldier appeared. They scanned the road and began eyeing the stony, grassy slopes on either side. Surely, they could see how beautiful of an ambush site this was. A third soldier appeared over the lip.
How many were there? Six per Infantry Fighting Vehicle meant—
The game changed then. Maybe opening communication with the operators—the drone pilots—in Arizona did it. How long had the American stealth drones been waiting? The CIA officer had told them the ones for this mission were super-quiet. But Paul figured he should have at least heard something up in the darkness if the drones were here. The Marine Corps used drones and Paul always heard them long before he’d seen them. Tonight, it was different, very different, a good surprise.
Maybe America finally had a few secret weapons of its own.
The first that Paul, and likely those soldiers down there, knew about the drones was the flare of a launching Hellfire III missile as it appeared in the dark sky. It blossomed into existence like a shooting star. There was a streak as the missile sped earthward and then out of sight. Paul figured the Chinese vehicles had stopped on the steepest part of the road, warned by the hover that enemy combatants waited for them here. A terrific explosion illuminated the night as if a giant had lit an arc welder. It was brightly white and hurt Paul’s eyes. The Chinese that Paul could see—their bulky armor with the oversized chest plates starkly visible now—glanced back and then hit the ground. They crawled away from the strike.
Another Hellfire III erupted into existence. Did that mean there was a second circling stealth drone, or did the missile come from the same craft that had fired the first? One thing was certain, the Air Force had made it here without a hitch. It was good to know something worked right on their side.
Several new Chinese soldiers appeared on the road. They ran up over the lip at speed. Two of them dropped their assault rifles and leaned over as they gripped their knees, panting. A different soldier appeared, striding into view. He blew a whistle. The noise was sharp and commanding. The others straightened, the two picking up their dropped weapons.
On the other side of the lip, out of Paul’s sight, Chinese anti-air rockets fire-balled upward into the darkness. Maybe to show them who had the biggest balls tonight, two more Hellfire missiles appeared, streaking down.
An explosion in the starry sky—brief but deadly illumination—showed a Chinese hit.
“Sergeant Lee?” the operator asked.
Paul realized he still held the satellite phone against his ear. “Gunnery Sergeant Kavanagh here,” he said. It always surprised him how calm his voice sounded during these things.
“You blew the mine too soon,” the operator said.
Did they have a higher drone up there watching the proceedings? Just how many drones had the Air Force been able to slip through the Chinese defenses? The enemy border bristled with radar, missiles, lasers, flak guns, AWACS planes and jet fighters and even with “distant” satellite recon. If the Air Force could get all these stealth drones through, why had they used only two commandos?
“Looks like you’re right about the mine,” Paul said.
“Is your screen up?”
“Just a minute,” Paul said. This felt too surreal, it always did. He pulled a computer scroll out of the rucksack, flicking a switch that stiffened it. A second later he viewed the situation from one of the drones that used night vision. Trucks burned on the steep road. Chinese infantry fired assault rifles into the air. Each shot looked like a spark on the screen. Paul spotted a Marauder-sized light tank. No, not a tank. The vehicle swiveled a pair of anti-air cannons and began chugging radar-guided flak into the sky. Out of the corner of Paul’s eye, he witnessed an explosion, which indicated a hit, another dead American UCAV: Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. A different drone targeted the enemy. Paul watched his screen as crosshairs centered on the Chinese vehicle and as a Hellfire streaked down and obliterated the cannons.
“Do you have visual?” the operator asked.
“Sure do,” Paul said.
“We’re putting down another barrage,” the operator said. “Then you have to go in, finish them and find the Blue Swan container. We have to take care of some enemy air headed your way.”
Oh yeah, sure, no problem. “Have you counted the number of enemy infantry?” Paul asked.
“That’s going to change right now,” the operator said. “Keep your head down.”
Several things happened at once. Maria Valdez on her midway position on the hill opened up with the .50 caliber Browning. She was four football-field lengths away from the nearest enemy. The Chinese officer with the whistle went down in a heap. The others hit the dirt a second time and swiveled on their bellies toward the machine gun. Several crawled like mad for shielding rocks. Others opened up, firing back at Maria.
That’s a mistake. The Chinese were pinned on the road, easy targets for the Browning, which had greater accuracy at range than the assault rifles. In the next eight seconds, Maria killed two more enemy as her slugs ripped through body armor like pencils through paper.
Then the sun appeared—a monstrous light half-hidden by the steep slope. Paul clawed the earth, pressing his body against its protective soil. Concussion arrived with the sound. It lifted Paul, flipped and threw him against the soil so he rolled. Thunder boomed and shook the bones in his body.
No one had told him about this. Was the Air Force using nukes? Or was this one of their nifty fuel-air bombs, the kind that sprayed a mist of explosive gassy liquid and ignited?
“They’re all yours now,” a gloating man said into his ringing ear.
Paul was only vaguely aware that he still held onto the satellite phone. All mine? What do I want with them? “Roger,” he said. “How about keeping the spy plane up there so I can see what they’re doing?”
“We still have to extract you,” the operator said.
Paul scowled. That wasn’t an answer. Then he realized it was. The spy plane—the drone—would stay to guide the extraction vehicles. They had to get “Blue Swan” back into America so the techs could pull it apart and figure out its great secret.
Maria’s Browning kept chugging. Every fifth bullet was a tracer—a red light—helping guide the thin deadly line into desperate Chinese.
That was a problem, as desperate soldiers made dangerous ones. Several fired back from rocks near the lip. One of them, probably more, had radios. They would summon help, which might be helos, enemy drones or even jets to lay down old-fashioned napalm.
Paul checked the screen and choked on what he saw. While coughing, he saw movement among the burning Chinese vehicles on the steep part of the road. That was the problem with resorting only to bombs. The earth was a big place, with many folds and seams for anxious men to hide. It meant, as it always had, that infantry needed to go in to finish a task. Trouble was, his infantry was six skeletal guerillas and one bloodthirsty chick against—Paul counted at least ten more Chinese on the screen. Those in the rocks made another four. Fourteen alerted, body-armored enemies against their eight were poor odds.
It was only a matter of seconds before the Chinese in the rocks spotted him out here in the open. Some of them, at least, must have night vision equipment.
“Yeah,” Paul said.
He dragged the fifteen-pound AT4 to him. It had a HEAT round, made to disable an armored vehicle. He removed the safety pin at the rear of the tube. That unblocked the firing rod. He lifted it over his shoulder, moving his legs to the side. Otherwise, the back-blast would burn them. He moved back the front and rear covers so the iron sights popped into firing position. With quick precision, he moved the firing rod, cocking the lever forward and over the top to the right side. He sighted the largest boulder behind which the four Chinese hid. Taking a breath and holding it, Paul used his thumb and pressed the forward red firing button.
With a whoosh and the heat of back-blast, the round blew out of the tube. Time seemed to stand still. The 84mm round struck the boulder, exploding it and killing several Chinese.
Maria swung the tripod-mounted Browning and worked over the dead. She caught one man crawling for new cover.
“Let’s go!” Paul shouted. “We have to beat the others who are trying to climb up to the lip. If we do, we can pick them off.”
He grabbed his assault rifle and ripped open a flap on his belt as he ran. Lee had loved bayonets fixed to the end of his assault rifle. The idea of sticking the enemy had always seemed to excite the Ranger. Paul had read studies. Less than one percent of combat deaths were due to bayonet. The gleaming blade on the end looked fierce, but that was about it.
Paul drew a long sound suppressor out of his pouch. On the run, he screwed it onto his assault rifle. The “silencer” tonight had little to do with quiet shots and everything toward hiding muzzle flash. If he used full auto-fire, the sound suppressor would quickly overheat and become useless. His idea was aimed fire while keeping hidden from the enemy, hopefully long enough to kill all of them before they figured out his position.
Paul heard his own labored breathing and the crunch of his boots. Behind him followed three guerillas. He glanced over his shoulder. Two carried their RPGs. The smart one had a submachine gun out. Could he count on them to help him? A further twist showed him Maria on the slope. Her team dismantled the .50 caliber. That was a mistake. He could have used her to give fallback cover. She wanted to kill Chinese, however, and that meant moving the heavy machine gun forward. It was hard to fault her desire.
With his mouth open, as hot air burned down his throat, Paul sprinted for the lip, the edge that would show him the steep road and the burning vehicles. Ten Chinese soldiers were coming up, and he was sure that reinforcements were on their way from somewhere. He had to get this “Blue Swan” and be long gone, or he was going to end up in a torture chamber, worked over by experts.
He failed to win the footrace. A Chinese soldier stumbled over the lip and onto the visible road. If Maria still had her position, she could have killed the man.
Paul slid to a halt while still on the slope, tore off the night vision goggles and brought the assault rifle’s butt to his shoulder. He panted, knelt and winced as a stone pressed painfully against his kneecap. He shifted his position and peered through the night vision scope. The man kept moving in his scope, in and out of sight because Pau’s hard breathing moved his rifle too much. Paul took a deep breath, let it halfway out and held it, feeling as if he was underwater while trying to do it and while desperately needing air.
Concentrate. Squeeze the trigger.
The kick slammed against his shoulder. The soldier went down. Paul strained to see through the scope. The soldier crawled for cover. He’d just knocked the man down, likely hitting body armor.
Like a basketball player taking his second free throw—one who had missed the first shot—Paul aimed with greater deliberation and squeezed the trigger.
The Chinese soldier jerked and sagged, and half his face was missing as he lay on the ground.
War is Hell.
Paul glanced back at his help. The three guerillas lay on the ground. They must have stopped when he stopped, which was a natural reaction. That wasn’t going to win them the needed position, nor garner them the “Blue Swan” whatever it proved to be.
“Go, go, go!” Paul shouted at the three.
Time was everything now. Forgetting to pick up his night vision goggles, Paul stood and ran for the road and for the lip. After four steps, he realized his mistake, but it was too late to go back. He had nine Chinese soldiers to kill if he was going to get home to Cheri and his son Mike.
Enemy gunfire erupted from the lip, each barrel blazing flame as several Chinese shot at once. They had to be on their bellies, wisely using cover.
Paul dove for the second time tonight. This time, he was hardly aware of striking the ground. Without the rucksack, it was like jumping onto a mattress. Behind him, a guerilla cried out in mortal agony. Paul didn’t need to look back to know one of the guerillas was down.
Paul crawled and the dirt around him spit. A bullet whined past his head. Paul jumped up and ran crouched-over, yearning to reach a half-buried boulder. Something hot struck his left leg. He stumbled, but managed to keep his feet. Then he jumped, pulled the assault rifle close to his chest and shoulder, and rolled. More bullets hissed like wasps. Chips of rock struck his face.
He looked back and couldn’t see the three guerillas. He lay stretched out behind his boulder, momentarily safe from Chinese fire. He checked himself, but couldn’t find the satellite phone. He must have dropped it somewhere. Fortunately, he still had the scroll. Rolling it open, he studied the situation from the vantage of the patrolling drone. The nine Chinese were lying in a line on the lip, using it like a trench. Each wore body armor and each fired a QBZ-95. The only good thing was Maria. She’d set up the Browning again.
Paul glanced behind him just as the Browning opened up. The .50 caliber had much greater range, greater reach, than the enemy weapons.
“Okay,” Paul whispered to himself, looking at the screen again. His three guerillas were down. By the angle and stillness of their bodies, they each looked dead.
How much ammo did Maria have? The answer would be the same every time: not enough.
“You have to use her Browning while you can,” he told himself.
Paul pressed his forehead against the hard-packed ground. He had to think. He had to use what he had, which was what exactly? He had intel on the enemy, suppressing fire for a few more minutes and some night vision with his scope. The enemy must have night vision, too, but they couldn’t see him here behind the rock. For the moment, they didn’t have any UAVs. He had to use that against them. What made the most sense?
It came to him. It was obvious.
Paul took a deep breath, rolled the scroll and jammed it back into a pouch. Then he began to slither on his belly, using the rocks and boulders as a shield. His goal was simplicity. He had to get behind the Chinese and pick them off.
The next few minutes strained Paul’s stamina. Sweat kept dripping into his eyes. The rough ground tore through the fabric of his shirt at the elbows. The stony ground did the same to his flesh. He bled, but that didn’t matter now. Maybe in some future life it would matter. In the here and now, he kept using his elbows as he slithered for his destination.
Fortunately, Maria kept the enemy busy. Her team had carried extra ammo, which she now used prodigiously. Maybe she was smart after all. Maybe the colonel had known what he was doing sending his little girl.
Did Colonel Valdez love America? Paul had his doubts. Instead, the colonel’s logic must have been cold and inflexible. On her own, Mexico could never free herself from the Chinese. The country was prostrate and shackled: a victim to the world’s greatest power. To gain freedom, Mexico needed America as strong as possible. If the Chinese could breach the US’s “Maginot Line” on the border and begin tearing chunks of agricultural land from the U.S., it would show the rest of the world it was possible. The South American Federation would join in the attack. The German Dominion would likely drop airmobile brigades to secure an eastern state for itself as it launched its hovers from Cuba. If “Blue Swan” really was a weapon that could allow the Chinese to breach the world’s strongest defensive line, Colonel Valdez would want the Americans to find out about it so they could fix the problem. That would be enough of a reason to send his little girl into the fray.
Victory can’t come down to this little firefight, can it?
Paul gripped his assault rifle as he eased onto his feet. Blood dripped from his elbows. Below him to the left, he spied the burning vehicles on the steep hill road. They were all in a line, and they illuminated the nine Chinese prone on the road’s lip and to the right and left of the road. Straight below Paul were rocks and shale. He was roughly three hundred yards away from the Chinese.
Gripping the assault rifle, Paul began to climb down the rough slope. He should have kept his night vision goggles. Instead, he had to move slowly, testing rocks with his feet, pulling back when one shifted. If one clattered too loudly, one of the Chinese might look over and see him.
How long did he have until enemy reinforcements showed up? The fact this was a “Blue Swan” convoy probably meant not long. He might already be out of time.
Paul blinked sweat out of his eyes. He wasn’t going to get it done like this. He was going to have risk to win. First taking a deep breath, he propelled himself off his rock, jumping down. He strained to see in the darkness, using the distant firelight as best he could.
He landed on a boulder and almost pitched off it. He couldn’t windmill his arms to keep his balance—they gripped his rifle—so he jumped again, sailing downward. He landed and a rock slipped out from under his left foot. His ankle twisted and he let himself go limp, crumpling onto the boulders, landing on his side. He crawled, panting, expecting bullets to rain against him. When they failed to materialize, he climbed to his feet. His left ankle throbbed. He set down the rifle and untied the boot’s laces. His fingers felt thick and useless. His heart hammered.
You have to keep moving. You can’t stand out here exposed like this.
With stiff fingers, he jerked the laces tighter, knotting them quickly. He grabbed the assault rifle, jumped down ten feet and landed hard on a flat boulder. He winced at the pain shooting up his left leg. He plopped onto his butt and slid over the boulder’s side, landing on dirt. Using the night vision scope, he examined the terrain. Okay. He began trotting. Each time he put pressure on the left foot, his ankle flared with agony. Sweat streaked his face and his left hip began to hurt.
Finally, Paul lay behind a boulder, below and to the side of the nine Chinese by about one hundred and fifty yards. His mouth was bone dry so that his tongue felt raspy against the roof of his mouth.
He climbed to a crouch behind a boulder, unhooked a canteen and guzzled. He waited, and he guzzled again. Sweat drenched his clothes. He was shaking. The idea of crawling away and getting the hell out of here kept appearing more appealing by the second. White Tiger commandos were surely on their way. Enemy jets could drop napalm on everything. The Chinese were ruthless that way.
“Bastards,” he muttered, picking up the assault rifle.
He rested his bloody elbows on the boulder, bringing up the scope and taking several deep breaths. He needed calm. He needed steadiness. He put two extra magazines beside him. He didn’t want to waste time later unhooking them from his belt. He peered through the scope, judging the situation. Maria must almost be out of ammo by now. Once he started firing…
“Get it done,” he whispered.
Through his night vision scope, Paul Kavanagh sighted the leftmost Chinese lying on the ground. The soldier had pulled back from the lip, clutching his QBZ-95 between his knees.
Carefully, slowly, Paul squeezed the trigger. The assault rifle kicked, and the Chinese soldier lay back, his throat obliterated.
Paul was in the zone and continued firing with deliberate precision. When the third Chinese soldier shouted, standing up before Paul’s second shot put him down forever, the others finally noticed. The fourth went down with shattered teeth and a gaping hole in the back of his neck. The rest began firing downslope, spraying bullets, seeking Paul. It was a good thing he’d screwed on the sound suppressor, hiding his muzzle flashes.
It took the entire second magazine to kill the fifth and sixth soldiers.
Maybe the remaining three Chinese had enough of the silent killer who hid behind them. One bolted up over the lip. Maria’s Browning chattered a long burst and there came a terrible scream. She still had bullets.
The last two Chinese took off running away from Paul. He stood up and fired fast, sending bullet after bullet, chipping rock beside them and spitting dirt by their feet, but failing to nail either. They got away and both of them carried weapons.
Will they double back to fight?
Paul shook his head. He didn’t know, but he felt soiled by the encounter. Sniper-fire killing always did that to him. The day he truly began to enjoy deliberate butchery, he felt, would be the day he was a destroyer and no longer a soldier simply doing his duty.
Blue Swan. It was time to search for the miracle weapon.
Slinging the rifle’s strap over his shoulder, Paul limped toward the burning vehicles. It would be just his luck that this was the wrong convoy. There was only one way to find out.
By the time he reached the Chinese vehicles, his bad ankle made walking an act of pure will. He didn’t need to check the IFVs or the big troop trucks. The smell of cooked flesh coming from them nauseated him. He’d never gotten used to that, or the look of the dead, some with melted faces or bone sticking up around blackened flesh.
Whatever bomb the Air Force had used was brutal. Likely, it was one of the new secret weapons people blogged about these days. America had lost the Arctic Circle oil rigs and Hawaii, but they weren’t going to lose the mainland. Soon now, the world and the Chinese in particular were going to learn what old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity meant. That was one of the problems, however. The East—meaning the PAA and sometimes India—had greater manufacturing ability than the rest of the world. The East had also shown the niftiest battlefield hardware in both Alaska and Hawaii.
Paul limped toward a long-bed vehicle, what looked like a big missile carrier. This must be “Blue Swan,” a new kind of missile. Pulling out a digital camera, Paul began taking pictures. The thing was huge.
A shout brought him around.
He spied Maria on the lip of the road. She waved, and Paul realized the last burning vehicles illuminated him. It showed, at least, that the two surviving Chinese hadn’t doubled back. Only one of the original six guerillas stood with Maria. The two of them began down the road toward him.
Paul heard approaching helicopters then, a loud whomp-whomp sound. Those couldn’t be the Air Force, at least not the American Air Force.
Biting his lower lip with indecision, Paul stood beside the damaged missile carrier for three seconds. Then he bolted toward the carrier bed. Despite his ankle, he climbed the flatbed and took close-up shots of the crumpled nosecone, the warhead. Fluids leaked from it. He poured water out of a canteen and collected some of the warhead fluid. He also aimed the camera at Chinese characters on the warhead, clicking like mad.
Maria’s shout brought him around. She cupped her hands, yelling, “The White Tigers are coming!” Then she pointed up into the air.
Paul needed the satellite phone. Did America have any more air-fighting drones here? What was he supposed to do now?
Then Paul received the greatest shock of the night. He looked up sharply as he heard a faint sound. The strangest helicopter he’d ever seen hovered about sixty feet above him. It had four rotors at four equidistant points. Did it have a cloaking device? Or had it moved soundlessly? He heard it now, a whispering noise. This was incredible.
It dropped lower so he could see an undercarriage bay door open. A rope ladder slithered down toward him.
The CIA officer hadn’t said anything about this. Was he supposed to climb up into the helicopter?
The rope ladder almost struck his shoulder the first time. The craft maneuvered into a better position and now the ladder touched his shoulder. Paul didn’t need any more invitation. He grabbed rope, hoisted up and got a foot onto a rung. He climbed toward the bay door. It took him a second to realize that as he climbed the craft lifted higher.
“What about Maria?” he shouted.
No one poked a head out of the bay door to look down and answer. There was only the whistling wind and the dropping ground. It was too late to let go, so Paul kept climbing. He looked down and saw Maria staring at him. She turned to the guerilla. They talked, and they ran back up the road.
Paul saw the first enemy helicopter. It was small and black, with a machine gunner sitting with his weapon to the side. The vehicle belonged to the White Tigers. Paul knew because he’d seen these in Hawaii hunting American commandos.
A second helo appeared. The machine gunners didn’t blaze at Maria. She kept sprinting for safety as the guerilla beside her stopped, knelt and aimed his assault rifle at a helo. The two gunners opened up then. One of them at least proved himself a marksman. The guerilla pitched violently to the ground, riddled with exploding bullets as his body turned into gory ruin.
Do they know it’s Colonel Valdez’s daughter?
Paul shuddered and he kept climbing. He stopped just before reaching the bay door, because he spied Chinese characters painted on the bottom of this machine.
They tricked me.
He went cold inside until he wondered if Americans had painted that on the drone in order to fool the enemy.
Paul stared at the ground. It was a long drop. The wind whistled past his face, making his eyes water. It wasn’t hot anymore, but getting cold.
I guess there’s only one way to find out. Paul climbed the last few rungs of the ladder and reached the door. He pulled himself within.
The rope ladder coiled in fast, a roller whizzing with automated speed. His last sight was a concussion grenade knocking Maria off her feet. Then the hatch shut with a clang and a light appeared. Paul spied three small seats and little else, no windows, no speakers, just walls. He secured himself in a seat, buckling in. Either this was a clever enemy trick or the newest American extraction drone. The idea of waiting to find out made Paul’s gut seethe.
“How about telling me what’s going on?” he said in the cramped area.
No one answered.
Scowling, Paul folded his arms and tried to make himself comfortable. It was impossible. He kept thinking about Maria Valdez in the hands of Chinese Intelligence.
-2-
The Darkness
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
Captain Wei sat in his office, smoking an American cigarette as he stared into space. The smoke curled from the glowing tip, adding to the office’s fumes. As he smoked, Wei blanked his mind, trying not to think about anything.
He was an interrogator for Dong Dianshan—East Lightning. Originally, they had been China’s Party Security Service. With the creation of the Pan Asian Alliance, their powers had broadened. They were particularly apt at extracting information from reluctant individuals and getting to the root of a matter.
Wei was a small man with large ears and careworn lines on his face. He’d practiced his trade for uncounted years. He wore the customary brown uniform with red belts and an armband with a three-pronged lightning bolt.
A buzzer on the littered desk sounded. Captain Wei checked his cell phone and sighed. His ten minutes of solitude was over. He sucked on the cigarette a last time, inhaling deeply. The American cigarettes were good. He exhaled while mashing the cigarette into an overflowing ashtray.
He opened a drawer and reached to the back, unhooking a hidden container. He opened it, staring at five blue pills. It was going to be a long interrogation, and according to the information he had received, Maria Valdez was a tough-minded partisan. Captain Wei sighed, shaking his head. He was weary beyond endurance with his tasks. Yes, he was good at it, perhaps the best in Mexico. But it was so tedious and predictable. Worse, his tasks had begun to bother him. This mutilation of flesh and twisting a person’s psyche, it hurt the soul—
Wei had been reaching for a pill. Now, his hand froze. Did humans possess souls? It was a preposterous notion. Humans were like any other animal, a mass of biological tissue with electrical nerve endings, a meat-sack of noxious fumes. People excreted, vomited, sweated and urinated, a wretched pile of filth that groveled under too much pain. Everyone broke. It used to be intriguing figuring out how to do it.
“No,” Wei whispered. His dark eyes had been reflective. Now the reptilian look appeared, revealing him as the predator he was.
The tips of his thumb and forefinger pinched a blue pill. He deposited the pill onto the tip of his tongue, using his tongue to roll the pill back. He gulped, swallowing. A tiny smile played on the edges of mouth. Soon, the drug would numb the pestering qualms that had become stronger this last year. One patient had told him these qualms were his conscience. As he aged—the patient had said—he must realize the end of this existence was much nearer than, say, seven years ago.
“Seven?” Wei had snapped. He’d wanted to know why the patient had picked the number seven. Seven years ago, he’d interrogated Henry Wu, who had been an insignificant worm, a former American caught on video during a Chinese food riot. It had been then that the first glimmer of…unease, yes, unease had begun with his various interrogations. Seven years ago, Wei had increased the number of cigarettes he smoked and the number of whiskey shots he gulped. These days, whiskey was not enough. He needed the blue pills to ease him through each tedious day. Unfortunately, these cost cash and he had begun taking more of them lately.
The desk buzzer sounded a second time.
Captain Wei straightened his uniform and marched for the door. It was time to fix the little traitor and pry information out of her.
He strode down a long corridor, a flight of stairs and passed several open windows. Mexico City seethed with traffic, with small cars thirty years out of date, with thousands of bicyclists and tens of thousands of pedestrians. Smoke stacks chugged black fumes into the air from coal furnaces. Yet farther away in the center of the city gleamed new glass towers, thanks to the latest construction boom with the influx of Chinese troops. Mexico was a land of extremes, with the basest poverty and the most incredible wealth.
Captain Wei left the windows behind, opening a door and descending to the basement. The first tendrils of drugged numbing soothed his bad mood. By the time he reached the patient’s door, the feeling had changed his mood altogether.
You are a meat-sack, Maria Valdez, one I will turn into a quivering hulk, a fountain of information.
Wei opened the door, expecting a number of quite predictable possibilities. The patient lay strapped to a table, naked, defenseless and primed for interrogation. An operative—a man—had shaved off every particle of the patient’s hair. Wei found that most effective with females. The operative had also attached a host of leads to sensitive body-areas. Maria Valdez should have pleaded with him now or glared in defiance or stared into space, in shock, or sobbed uncontrollably. She did none of these things. Instead, with eyes closed, the patient whispered, speaking to an imaginary entity, it appeared.
Wei scowled, with his good feeling evaporating. Invisible entities did not exist. There was only power and the scramble to be the inflictor of pain instead of the receiver. It was the law of the jungle, of tooth and claw.
“Leave us,” Wei told the operative.
The man bowed his head, hurrying for the door, never once lifting his gaze off the floor.
Wei listened for and heard the snick of the closing door. “Maria Valdez,” he said sharply.
The patient ignored him as she kept on whispering.
That would not do, no, no. Wei strode to the controls and tapped a pain inducer.
The patient grunted and her eyes bulged open. She twisted on the table. She was shapely, if too thin and bony for Wei’s tastes. She was also too tall, taller than he was—something he intensely disliked.
“Do I have your attention?” Wei asked in a considerate tone. It unbalanced and often unhinged patients to hear the solicitude in his voice and yet receive agony from his hands.
“I’m here,” she said, whatever that was supposed to mean.
They both spoke English, as Wei had taken language courses and become proficient in the American usage.
Wei now forced himself to smile. “I’m sure you understand the situation.”
“Yes! You’re one of the pigs invading my country.”
“My dear, please allow me to interject a factual point. You are the one who exudes a noxious odor. I refer to your sweat. We Chinese do not possess the same pig-like glands that you do.”
“Go to Hell!”
Captain Wei smiled, stepping away from the controls. He put a gentle hand on her left thigh, causing the patient to stiffen.
“You are in Hell, my dear,” he said.
“Wrong! In Hell, no one drinks beer.”
Wei frowned. What an odd statement. Was she already unhinged? “I do not care for your attitude.”
“That’s because you’re an invading hog,” she said.
“Maria,” he said, squeezing her thigh. It made her stiffen. He would teach her respect. Oh, she would learn to curb her tongue. First, he would begin her disorientation through soft speech. “You must not think of me as your enemy. I am here to help you.”
“You’re a worthless liar.”
A flicker of annoyance entered his eyes. “I can make your existence gruesome or I can ease your suffering. It is my choice. Fortunately for you, my dear, I am easy to please. All I ask is for a few tidbits of information from you.”
“I understand. I have what you want. But you have nothing I want except for your death, and I don’t think you’ll do me the favor of slitting your ugly throat.”
Wei smiled faintly. “You are a veritable she-tiger, but you are also a liar.”
“I curse you in the name of God.”
Wei’s smile slipped as he removed his hand from her thigh. Scowling, he went to the controls. He looked up at her. She grinned viciously, mocking him.
No, that would not do. He was in charge here. He would show her.
Captain Wei began to tap the controls hard with his fingertips. He winced once because he’d cut the nail down too much the other day on his left-hand middle finger. Then Maria Valdez screamed and thrashed on the table, causing him to forget about his own discomfort. Wei continued to inflict pain for some time, delighting in her various octaves. Finally, Maria slumped, unconscious.
Turning away, Wei stared up at the ceiling. What had overcome him? He’d never lost control of his emotions like this before. He was an interrogator, one of the best—no, the best in Mexico. He had a long list of questions his superiors wanted answered, yet now he’d needlessly tired out his patient. He should have already received a litany of her lies so he could compare her later answers and begin to pry out the truth. Never once during the torment had she cried out, offering to speak to end the pain. Obviously, the direct approach was the wrong method with this one. He must practice subtlety.
Wei cracked his knuckles and stepped beside a medical board. He selected a hypodermic needle and a vial of AE7. She was stubborn, possessing a core belief system that added to her rigid worldview. A double dose, yes, she would need a greater dosage to force her thoughts into a fantasy delusion. Then she would begin to tell him what he needed to learn.
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nice previews there. However... I gotta wonder at the whole "The USA land is so valuable because it still produces food". In the event of a new Ice Age coming down upon us, wouldn't weather patterns across the world be screwed up far and wide? I'd think drought would be hitting the USA hard. And Canada would be royally screwed as it's farming regions got colder and colder. And Australia... it always hovers on the edge of drought, and this scenario would mean that it would really be suffering...
this is the cover of an upcoming book by Robert Conroy. There are zilch details on it. It probably isn't, but it looks like it could be a sequel to "1901"... and I'd love to read that...
JSmith
Banned
A frequent topic here. I think this will be good-not out till October though 
http://www.amazon.com/If-Kennedy-Lived-President-Alternate/dp/0399166963/ref=reg_hu-rd_add_1_dp
Book Description
Release date: October 22, 2013
From one of the country’s most brilliant political commentators, the bestselling author of Then Everything Changed, an extraordinary, thought-provoking look at Kennedy’s presidency—after November 22, 1963.
November 22, 1963: JFK does not die. What would happen to his life, his presidency, his country, his world?
In Then Everything Changed, Jeff Greenfield created an “utterly compelling” (Joe Klein), “riveting” (The New York Times), “eye-opening” (Peggy Noonan), “captivating” (Doris Kearns Goodwin) exploration of three modern alternate histories, “with the kind of political insight and imagination only he possesses” (David Gregory). Based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting, and his own knowledge of the players, the book looked at the tiny hinges of history—and the extraordinary changes that would have resulted if they had gone another way.
Now he presents his most compelling narrative of all about the historical event that has riveted us for fifty years. What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place?
As with Then Everything Changed, the answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. It is a tour de force of American political history.
http://www.amazon.com/If-Kennedy-Lived-President-Alternate/dp/0399166963/ref=reg_hu-rd_add_1_dp
Book Description
Release date: October 22, 2013
From one of the country’s most brilliant political commentators, the bestselling author of Then Everything Changed, an extraordinary, thought-provoking look at Kennedy’s presidency—after November 22, 1963.
November 22, 1963: JFK does not die. What would happen to his life, his presidency, his country, his world?
In Then Everything Changed, Jeff Greenfield created an “utterly compelling” (Joe Klein), “riveting” (The New York Times), “eye-opening” (Peggy Noonan), “captivating” (Doris Kearns Goodwin) exploration of three modern alternate histories, “with the kind of political insight and imagination only he possesses” (David Gregory). Based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting, and his own knowledge of the players, the book looked at the tiny hinges of history—and the extraordinary changes that would have resulted if they had gone another way.
Now he presents his most compelling narrative of all about the historical event that has riveted us for fifty years. What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place?
As with Then Everything Changed, the answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. It is a tour de force of American political history.
JSmith
Banned
More asb-looks interesting
http://www.amazon.com/ReDeus-Divine...ie=UTF8&qid=1366855740&sr=1-1&keywords=redeus
Book Description
Publication Date: July 19, 2012
The gods have returned. All of them! The change promised by the ending of the Mayan Calendar in 2012 manifested itself in an unexpected manner. Every pantheon of gods and goddesses, from every belief the world over, has returned ... changing the world forever. As the pantheons settle into their ancestral lands, they vie for worshippers, gaining or losing power along the way. They find the world of man a bewildering, crazy quilt, and each wishes to remake their lands in their own image. Come and meet some of the inhabitants of this strangely familiar world in eleven new tales that explore what it means to worship in this new reality. A Knight Templar hunting mysteries. A rookie pitcher with a unique belief system. A wounded solider returned to battle by a goddess. A reporter who isn’t sure what to believe. A homicide detective on the Manhattan beat. A man out to kill the gods. A single father trying to survive in a world without Santa Claus. And many more! Chronicling this new tomorrow are Dave Galanter, Allyn Gibson, Phil Giunta, Robert Greenberger, Paul Kupperberg, William Leisner, Scott Pearson, Aaron Rosenberg, Lawrence M. Schoen, Dayton Ward, and Steven H. Wilson. Join them and discover a world where everything old is new again—even the gods themselves.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Aaron Rosenberg is an award-winning, bestselling novelist, children’s book author, and game designer. His novels include the humorous science fiction novel No Small Bills, the historical dark fantasy For This Is Hell, the Dread Remora space-opera series, and the O.C.L.T. supernatural thriller series, plus novels for Star Trek, Warhammer, WarCraft, and Eureka. His children’s books include Bandslam: The Novel, books for iCarly, PowerPuff Girls, and Transformers Animated, and the original series Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles. His RPG work includes Asylum, Spookshow, the Origins Award-winning Gamemastering Secrets, The Supernatural Roleplaying Game, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and The Deryni Roleplaying Game. You can visit him online at gryphonrose.com or follow him on Twitter @gryphonrose. Having grown up on fantasy, science fiction, and comic books, Robert Greenberger has reveled working in these fields as an adult. He has worked as an editor or executive for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Starlog Press, Gist Communications, and Weekly World News. As a freelance writer, he has written for all ages and numerous genres, notably the media tie-in field with several Star Trek novels to his credit. He won the Scribe Award for his novelization of Hellboy II: The Golden Army and has gone on to co-found Crazy 8 Press. Recent releases include The Art of Howard Chaykin, co-writing Stan Lee’s How to Write Comics, and co-writing The Essential Superman Encyclopedia. He makes his home in Connecticut where he has been training to become a high school English teacher. For more, see www.bobgreenberger.com.
Product Details
Thus was ReDeus born. The three of us bashed the idea around, worked out a basic framework, and come up with a game plan. We would each create a main character, and a story arc, and then gradually interweave them. We had grand ambitions, and noble ones.
But time and tide wait for no man, nor for any collaborative project. We each had other work to do, and somehow we couldn’t quite find the time to pull ReDeus together. Paul had to bow out due to other commitments, and rather than shoulder the whole creative burden by ourselves we brought in another buddy, Steve Savile, who Aaron was working on some other projects with. Still things progressed slowly. Eventually Steve found he was overworked and had to step back, but then Paul freed up some time and rejoined us. And we agreed to forge ahead with all due speed.
But at this point we decided to start things a little differently. We were each writing an initial story with our main characters, but we wanted more—more variety, more of a look at this brave new world, more exploration of its people and its themes. So we turned to some friends, each of them talented writers themselves. We told them about ReDeus, and we invited them to take up quill or keyboard and pen a story of their own to add to the fun.
And, luckily for us, many of them chose to take us up on our offer.
What you hold is the result of that. This is the first collection of ReDeus stories. If you enjoy them, it will not be the last.
When I was eight years old, my parents took me to the big Dayton’s department store downtown one snowy Saturday afternoon, so I could give Santa my Christmas wish list. I was at the age when I still believed, but based on the teasing of other kids and my own logical inferences, I’d begun to have doubts. So I asked him point blank as I sat on his knee, “Are you really real?”
The bearded old man dropped his jolly smile, looked me straight in the eye, and told me, “Well, that’s for you to decide for yourself, isn’t it?”
I recall that long-ago visit as I sit on a bench just beyond the mall court outside Macy’s, my bags set at my feet, watching the line of children and parents here to pay their holiday respects.
“I don’ wanna see the Easter Bunny,” one little blond-headed boy whines to his mother. “I wanna see Santa!”
“It’s not the Easter Bunny,” his mother tells him, in that clench-jawed, please-stop-embarrassing-me-in-public voice my own mother so often used with me. “It’s Jiibayaabooz, the Spirit Rabbit. He’s the one who will be giving us presents and blessings this year.”
She’s lying to the boy, of course. The guy sitting in what traditionally has been Santa’s throne is indeed wearing the same bunny costume the mall drags out at Easter time. He’s missing his basket of colored eggs, and the ribbon around his neck has been replaced by a necklace of beads and animal teeth. It’s not even a good likeness of the Jiibayaabooz who manifested, along with all the other pantheons of gods, shortly after the Olympians’ disruption of the Olympics open ceremonies in July. But the mall’s management, bless their capitalistic little hearts, are determined to save the holiday formerly known as Christmas, now renamed the Winter Solstice Celebratory Season.
The boy, who’s about six, is having none of it, though. “No! I wanna see Santa!” he says again, his face turning red, and his eyes just on the verge of flooding over. The other parents in line stare at these two with nervous expressions. They’ve come to pay homage to our new god, and are clearly worried about how he will react to this child’s unholy outburst.
My heart, though, goes out to the poor kid. I would far rather see Santa here, too. But he’s been outlawed along with the Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It seems silly to me. Yes, Santa is based on the Christian Saint Nicholas, and yes, flying all around the globe in a single night bestowing gifts on all the children with whom he finds favor is pretty god-like behavior. But everyone over the age of ten understands that he’s just a symbol, a myth.
Then again, up until a couple of months ago, so were the gods.
As the mother tries desperately to calm her son, a pair of mall security officers approach, one man and one woman, moving with the kind of urgency you don’t normally see from rent-a-cops. “Ma’am,” the man says, “we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
“No, everything’s all right,” she says as she pulls her child close, burying his tear-streaked face against her stomach. “He’s just tired and cranky, that’s all.”
The guard shakes his head, and reaches to put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re causing a disruption, and disturbing the other patrons.”
“No, everything’s fine,” she says, cringing in on herself as she tries to shrink away. Seeing that she’s not going to go along quietly, the second guard circles around behind. As the woman backs away from the one guard, the other grabs her wrist and twists back and up, causing her to cry out in pain. “You have to let me pay homage!” she shouts as she’s lead away by the female guard, with her partner carrying the now hysterical child behind her. “We are believers, Jiibayaabooz!” she shouts back over her shoulder. “I pledge myself to you!”
“What’s going on, Dad?”
I’ve been so absorbed in the drama I didn’t even notice my own kid rejoin me. At fourteen, Abby is already nearly as tall as me, and with her long chestnut hair pulled back away from her face in a ponytail, she’s almost the spitting image of her mother at her age. “Oh, nothing,” I tell her as I stand and start to gather up my stuff. “Did you find everything you were looking for?”
“Pffft,” she answers, and punctuates it with an eye roll. “None of these stores have anything.” This, in spite of the fact that I count four full shopping bags in her two hands. Then she drops her voice and adds, “Stupid foreign gods.”
I know that this sentiment is not only due to the fact that the Jade Emperor has declared a trade embargo, causing a shortage of cheap imported goods. Abby’s best friend, Sue Bakken, had left town just before the start of the school year for Oslo, along with her whole family and almost half a million other members of Minnesota’s Norwegian-American population. Of course, it’s not only the Norse gods calling the descendants of their former followers home; the same holds true for the Southern Europeans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and so on. They’re saying that the U.S. population has dropped more than ten percent due to emigration over the past four months, and might fall as much as thirty percent by the end of 2013.
We head out toward the parking garage, past darkened storefronts covered over with oversized posters of generic winter scenes. Overhead, hidden speakers play the same non-season-specific pop music they did all year round. Once out the door, it’s a short walk to our car. No one would ever guess that this was what the Mall of America was like on Black Friday.
For the first time, there are no leftovers in the house this weekend after Thanksgiving—our new divine overlords decreed that, if the holiday was meant as a celebration of a bountiful harvest, then any excess should be offered up to them. So tonight, we dine on franks and beans. Abby texts with her friends throughout the meal—I’d long ago given up the battle to keep the phone away from the dinner table. While she chats about whatever it is teenage girls chat about, I absently watch CNN. Riots have broken out across Germany, in protest of the huge influx of immigrants answering Odin’s call to return to the fatherland. The Vatican issued a statement claiming Pope Benedict is recovering from a bad case of the flu, and calling reports from the Italian press that he was on his deathbed “pagan propaganda.” And Washington is still in chaos, just as it has been since the Constitution was suspended and the November 6th elections cancelled. It’s almost funny to see some of the same people who spent four straight years disparaging Barack Obama now raging over the way he was driven from the White House.
Then, with the headlines out of the way, they switch back to the interview set, where the pretty young host is sitting and chatting with a Manitou, who she introduces as Curly Hair, the gods’ emissary to what’s left of the U.S. government. The spirit being has the head of a buffalo, and the body of a lean but muscular man covered in brown fur.
“Well, Sierra,” he says in response to a softball question, “most modern Americans have forgotten that your Founding Fathers, as they were forming their new nation, were influenced far more by the example of the Iroquois Confederacy than they were by any Greek model of democracy…” Curly Hair speaks in a strong, clear voice that demands respect, but watching him, I can’t help but think he looks more like a Pixar CGI-rendered character than anything else.
“What about those who are concerned about the loss of religious freedom,” the interviewer asks next.
Curly Hair chuckles at that. “Religious freedom was a fine concept for a time when the gods were hidden, and you humans had to guess what it was we required of you. But now that we have returned and reestablished our rule, to allow individuals the right to deny reality would be—”
Suddenly, the television goes dark. My immediate thought is another power outage, but the lights remain on, and at the same time, Abby mutters an annoyed “What the—?” as she pokes at the darkened screen of her phone. Before I can stand up or do anything else, I feel a sudden change in the air, like an electrical storm had suddenly rolled in from the living room. Then the kitchen fills with an unearthly light, and once it fades, we are in the presence of a goddess.
“Greetings from the gods of Olympus, David Anderson and Abigail Anderson,” says Iris, herald of Hera, in a voice like the purest music. She is tall and dark-haired, with an olive complexion and a pair of golden wings. She gestures with her caduceus as she tells us, “I come to offer you blessings in this season of celebration and renewal.”
I sigh and tell her, “Not interested.”
Her beatific smile turns a bit venomous at that. “It’s rather disrespectful to dismiss a message from the gods so,” she says. “To say nothing of the dismissal of a goddess herself.”
I start to shiver in spite of myself. There is no questioning the power this being and her kind wield, and there have been more than enough stories about the inventive ways they have exercised those powers since their arrival. But, dammit, I am a 21st century man, and I refuse to simply swallow this shit whole. “With respect, Iris, I’m only trying to make this easier for you. You want me and my daughter to leave our home, move to the Mediterranean, and to worship Zeus and his pantheon.” We’d been offered similar invitations from the Asgardians, the Tuatha de Danaan, Ukko, et cetera. The Anderson family tree has roots all over the planet (even Africa, as I recently learned from Anansi when he let me know great-great-great-grandma was a light-skinned runaway from Virginia), and that being the case, we showed up on the radar screens of all these old gods looking for new adherents. By the same token, we didn’t feel the kind of irresistible pull they exerted on so many others.
“You are bold to speak so bluntly,” Iris tells me. “And bold men make for strong nations. This is why I come to you here today. May I?” Iris gestures to one of the two empty chairs at the kitchen table, and it takes my brain an extra second to realize this goddess is asking my permission to take a seat. At last I nod, and Iris slides gracefully into the chair. She folds her wings in and her luminosity dims ever so slightly. She even seems to shrink a bit, and I realize she’s making an effort to come down to our mortal level, and present herself as “just folks.”
“You are mistaken in guessing the purpose of my visit,” she tells me, laying her staff on the table and leaning forward on her elbows. “Until now, yes, we gods have been calling our followers together, gathering and consolidating our strength. But, these actions have had consequences that we did not foresee.”
“I thought gods were supposed to be all-knowing,” Abby pipes in, apparently following her old man’s example. I wish, not for the first time, I wasn’t such a lousy role model.
Luckily, Iris shows some indulgence. “If you’ve ever read any of your so-called ‘myths’, you’d know that we are far from omniscient or omnipotent. Those kind of impossible abilities are only ascribed to the imaginary gods of monotheistic fairy tales.”
Then she turns back to me. “We have been gone a long time, and the world has changed in ways we never anticipated. That so many of our children would cross the ocean to this continent, and so completely overwhelm it? And come to think of it as their own? It would have been unthinkable in the old times, when only the bravest of men would ever dream of wandering far beyond their own village. And even if they had, we never would have foreseen how thoroughly our children would decimate the savages born of this land.” She smiles at me, as if she thinks she’s paying me an immense compliment. “Though there was a necessity to calling our followers back to their ancestral home, we realize now that it would be imprudent to completely abandon the Americas and relinquish it to those from whom you had wrested control.”
“So, you mean to say—”
“If you would,” she interrupts sharply, “let me tell you what I mean to say, without trying to outguess me.” After a challenging pause which I decide not to accept, she continues. “What I mean to say is, the gods of Olympus see no reason, in this world as it is today, to limit ourselves to such a small territory. We mean to have these lands as well.”
“Even though the Indian gods have reclaimed them?” Abby asks.
Iris looks like she may actually laugh. “While I understand how any immortal being must seem as gods to you, let me assure you that we do not consider Coyote and Rabbit to be at the same level as Zeus and Hera.”
I’m tempted to ask what they think of Santa, but better sense prevails. Instead, I ask the bigger question: “And what does all of this have to do with us?”
“As I said before, it takes bold men to build a strong nation. Those whose will cannot be easily swayed, but who also have the wisdom to see reason, and to make proper judgments on that basis. An Olympian nation in America will need such men.”
Iris stands then, taking up her staff and letting her wings spread wide once again. “The time is coming soon, when your wisdom and courage will be tested. And if you prove yourself to have these qualities, David Anderson,” she says, her arms upraised in a kind of benediction, “you will find yourself greatly rewarded.”
“Greatly rewarded, huh?” My ex-wife Victoria gives me an oddly disconcerted look from the computer flatscreen. “And what does that mean, exactly?”
“No idea,” I tell her.
“You didn’t ask?” she replies, using her cross examination voice. In the five years since the split, we haven’t spoken directly to one another more than a dozen times, and that voice is a big reason why I try to avoid it. But, when Abby mentioned our visitor to her mother during their weekly Skype chat, she wanted to hear the details from me.
“Yes, I asked, but all she would say is ‘In time, in time.’ Just the typical cryptic god-speak.”
“But you’re not considering it, are you?”
I put my hands up and shrug at her. “I don’t even know what ‘it’ is I’m supposed to consider.”
“Does it matter?” She leans forward, closer to the webcam lens. “David, these so-called gods are not to be trusted.”
It’s more than slightly ironic, having this woman advise me on whom to trust. But, something in her tone catches my attention. “Why do you say that?”
“Open your eyes, David. Look at the absolute chaos these beings have created all over the planet. These are not benevolent gods. They don’t give a shit about you or any of the rest of us.”
Like the excellent lawyer she is, she builds a good case. After the divorce, her firm offered a promotion and transfer to their main offices in New York, and she’s become one of their fastest rising stars since then.
“And they’re obviously only trying to play on your ego to pull you to their side,” she continues. “I mean, come on. You’re a forty-year-old middle manager. What makes you so special to them?”
It’s a perfectly fair and legitimate question, but Tori can’t help but put that little extra personal dig at me in there. “Well, maybe the gods see something in me others can’t,” I shoot back, just a tad too defensive.
“David, seriously, do not trust them. You need to think of Abby here. If you let her get tangled up in this unholy spider’s web they’re weaving for you, I swear to every god there is, I will challenge for custody, and you will never see her again.”
I glower at her and try to hold back an angry sputtering retort which I know I’ll only regret later. In the end, though, I have to click the “end call” icon without a goodbye, just before I let loose a stream of obscenities at the blank screen.
For whatever reason, the gods seem befuddled by the internet. They’ve managed to take solid control of television and the newspapers, and make sure their version of any news story is presented as truth, and any others as rumor. The situation at the Vatican is a perfect example: it’s been over four months since the Pope’s last public appearance, and now the news channels are reporting Roman police have arrested over a hundred Catholic cardinals trying to sneak into the Papal enclave, presumably to choose his successor.
But if you go online, you’ll find reports that it’s all a complete fabrication by Zeus and friends, to demoralize the Christian community. Blurry camera phone videos claim to show Benedict alive and well, and giving his blessing to a near-empty Saint Peter’s Square. CNN and the BBC are prevented from reporting it, they say, and it’s only because of a few determined members of the faithful that the truth is able to get out. Whether these are legitimate or not, the thing that surprises me most is that they manage to get out on the Web at all.
And then there’s the even more suspicious stuff. “Did you know the Hopis believed the end of the world is coming December 21st?” Abby asks without looking up from her phone’s internet browser screen.
“You mean the Mayans, don’t you?”
“No, the Hopis, too,” she says. “There’s a prophecy that predicted all the stuff that happened since the whites came over, and then the final sign is that a ‘dwelling-place in the heavens’ falls to earth. This site says that dwelling-place in the heavens is where all the old gods have been living all these years.”
I tilt my head and give her a look. “And what do we say about believing something just because it’s posted to the internet?”
“But there’s also a link to NASA’s website,” she persists. “The convergence that the Mayans predicted? With the sun and the equator of the Milky Way? There’s also going to be an increase in sunspots then! And there are other predictions that the world is ending this year, too, by the Egyptians, and the Bible, and Nostradamus…”
“That I know is wrong,” I say. “Nostradamus predicted the world would end in 1999. And there was all this same kind of doomsday garbage circulating then, too, with planetary alignments and the panic over Y2K…”
“What’s Y2K?” Abby asks.
Before I can launch into my wise old man lecture on the history of the late 20th century, an explosion rattles the windows. We both jump up to look outside, and see the house across the street engulfed in flames.
We quickly pull on our boots and jackets and rush out, as do most of the neighbors up and down Washburn Avenue. It’s well below freezing with the sun down, and oddly, the burning house doesn’t seem to be giving off any heat. The McArdle family stands at the end of their driveway watching the conflagration. Off to one side, a seven-foot-tall black bear stands, forelegs crossed over its chest, giving them a reproachful glare. The Manitou says something to them I can’t hear, until we’ve gotten halfway across the street. “…and such disobedience cannot be tolerated,” the bear spirit growls nastily at them. “From anyone!” it then adds loudly for the benefit of the gathering neighbors.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Peter McArdle says, his voice almost cracking in restrained anger. Pete is, without exception, the nicest guy in the neighborhood. He’s the guy who’ll offer to come over with his snow blower right after a big storm, or volunteer to serve as mediator for any kind of petty property disputes. Any time there’s a birth or death in the family of anyone on the block, he and Kay are on their doorstep the following day with a big casserole dish or full Tupperware container. They are the last people on Earth who deserve to be burnt out of their house two weeks before Christmas. “We were just watching a video in our own home. Honestly, what kind of god is so threatened by Santa Claus?!”
“Observance of the Christian winter holiday has been forbidden,” the bear says, “as has any form of veneration of the gift-bearing Christian saint.”
“You’re burning their house down for watching a fucking Christmas movie?” It’s not until I see the shocked look from Abby and the others in the crowd that I realize I’m the one who just shouted this.
Then I notice their shocked looks shift, and when I follow their eyes, I see the bear is marching deliberately towards me. Its big rear paws stop less than a foot away, and I have to crane my neck to see its head and great slathering maw. “Do you question the power of the great spirits?” it demanded through a set of large sharp teeth.
“Shouldn’t I?” Up close and in person, I can definitely tell this animal spirit is no Pixar movie character. But something keeps me from shrinking away in abject terror and continuing. “Pete is right: why are you so scared of Santa Claus that you have to burn these people out of their home for watching…”
“Rudolph,” Tricia, the older McArdle child fills in for me. Her little brother, Michael, has his thumb jammed tight into his mouth to keep himself from crying.
“An animated special about a flying reindeer with a light-up nose who works for a fat man at the North Pole.” I actually hear myself laugh, and what’s more, I also hear a few scattered titters from the rest of the crowd. “If you can consider that to be such a threat to your power and authority, you’re hardly even worthy of being considered gods, are you?”
There’s a silence then that you can only hear on a winter’s night, when the snow seems to absorb every sound around you. The bear spirit stares directly at me with red-glowing eyes. Somehow, I stare back without flinching.
Then it raises its head and roars into the sky. I’m shocked backward on my heels, which slide out from under me on the icy pavement, and I drop hard on my tailbone. The roar coincides with a brilliant flash, and when I turn my head, I see the flames from the McArdles’ house jump impossibly high. An instant later, the fire has extinguished itself, as if a giant hand had crumpled a sheet of red-orange paper. When I’m able to blink the colored blobs from my vision and my eyes adjust to the suddenly dimmed light, the bear is gone, and nothing is left of the McArdle house but the scorched concrete and cinderblocks of the basement.
“Oh my God, Dad…!”
“You all right, Dave…?”
“Anderson, you crazy son of a…”
“…bravest thing I’ve ever seen…”
I must be in a slight daze, because the next thing I know, I’m back inside, laying on the couch, with my boots off and a blanket thrown over me. Abby is seated beside me, squeezing my hand tight, with Pete standing over her shoulder. “Hey, pal, you doing okay, now?” he asks. Even after losing everything he owns, he’s the first one to offer his help to a friend in need.
“Yeah. Fine,” I say, sitting up. “My ass’ll probably be black and blue tomorrow, but besides that…”
Pete shakes his head at me. “I thought for sure that thing was going to rip your head off!” he tells me. “What in the world got into you?”
I have no answer for him. But Abby beams at me, and tells Pete, with undisguised pride, “My dad is just a very bold man.”
I ask the McArdles to stay for the night, and after repeatedly telling me they don’t want to be a bother, and insisting it will only be for one night, they accept. We order a pizza, which goes a long way towards getting the kids’ spirits back up. After dinner, Abby takes the younger ones out to the other room to play video games while the adults have coffee in the kitchen. In contrast to their children, Pete and Kay have grown more morose as the evening’s worn on, and the reality of their situation has had a chance to sink in. “God,” Pete mutters to himself, head in his hands, staring into his half-empty mug. “What have I done?”
“You can’t blame yourself, Pete,” Kay tells him. “You were just trying to give the kids some little bit of a normal Christmas…”
“I should have known better.” Pete looks up at me and explains, “The kids have been so disappointed that they aren’t running any of the old classic specials on TV this year. And a friend of mine, he had this old VHS he’d saved from years ago when he taped them off the TV.” Then he surprises us by laughing. “And we thought the movie studios were tough on illegal video pirates, right?”
Kay and I also laugh at this bit of dark humor, but the moment of amusement is short-lived. “I keep praying that this all turns out like one of those shows,” Kay says. “That, maybe, Jiibayaabooz’s heart will grow three sizes and Christmas will be saved in the end.”
“Or,” I say, “maybe we won’t have to deal with Jiibayaabooz for a lot longer.”
Pete’s head jerks up. “What do you mean?” he asks.
Now it’s my turn to hesitate. Both Pete and Kay are both very religious—not in an in-your-face kind of way, but their church and the charity work they did was always a very central part of their lives. That old church had been ripped apart stone by stone by a powerful, highly localized whirlwind earlier this summer, the same fate that had befallen every other house of worship in the Twin Cities, most spectacularly the Cathedral of Saint Paul across the river, in the city now called East Minneapolis. I’m fairly certain that they’ll have an even stronger reaction to hearing about my little tête-à-tête with Iris than Tori did.
But I tell them anyhow, though I play down the whole “greatly rewarded” part. To my surprise, rather than being shocked or alarmed, they actually seem excited.
“What, you don’t see what this means?” Pete asks when I express my confusion. “There’s a civil war brewing amongst these different groups of immortals. We’ve been seeing glimpses of it for months over in Europe, with all the immigration from America and old borders starting to break down. Now, finally, it’s all coming to a head!”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Well, no, not a good thing,” Pete allows. “But…it’s what we’ve known is coming. What God has willed.”
I look from one glowing face to the other. “Shit,” I whisper. “You’re talking about Armageddon…and you’re looking forward to it!”
“David, understand,” Kay says. “The Battle of Armageddon doesn’t mean nuclear annihilation or human extinction. It means God’s final triumph over the forces of evil.”
“We know you’re not a believer,” Pete says in a slightly condescending tone that I’d always admired him for never using when talking about his religion. “But look at what Revelation says: ‘Satan will be released from his prison, and will go out to deceive the nations of the four corners of the world, to gather them for battle. And they surrounded the camp of God’s people, the beloved city.’ That’s pretty clearly what we’ve seen since Olympic Day, and with the siege of the Vatican.”
“You’re not Catholic,” I say.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re all Christians, and Vatican City is our last stronghold.”
Kay then says, “But the prophecy goes on to say, ‘And fire came down from God and devoured them, and the one who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.’“
Pete nods with an almost frightening fervor. “This is it, I know it now. This is the time of the Savior’s return.” And then he smiles at me. “This will be our Christmas miracle.”
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine at all.
It’s Thursday night, December the 20th. If the Mayans were right, the world ends at 11:11 tomorrow morning. If Pete and Kay are right, Jesus will make his return appearance on the anniversary of his first.
Like Pete said, I’m not a believer. The last time I set foot inside a church was my wedding day, and given the way that turned out, I’d never been in any hurry to go back. And normally, the demented scribbling of some first-century madman about seven-headed, ten-horned beasts holds no more truck with me than the work of Stone Age astronomers does. But it was kind of hard not to see the correlations with the world around us.
The news from the Vatican is getting more and more confusing. The networks announced the Pope’s death at least three times in the week that followed the fire at the McArdles’, only to retract those reports each time. The BBC World Service reported that the Catholic cardinals arrested in Rome had been sacrificed into the mouth of Mount Vesuvius, an accusation the Italian deiocracy vehemently denied. Curly Hair appeared daily on CNN, first condemning the Olympians for their inhumanity, then the Celt-run Beeb for running baseless rumors, all while maintaining his unwavering contempt for the Church. And through all this, more and more videos have appeared online of the Pope issuing messages of encouragement and hope in multiple languages (including Latin, probably as a deliberate poke in the eye to the Roman gods). Every time they tried to stamp out one video-hosting site, two more would pop up—like they were battling a digital Hydra, ironically enough.
But tonight, I try to force all other thoughts from my mind, and think of this simply as our traditional holiday celebration come four days early. Abby and I sit together at the foot of the secularly adorned evergreen and exchange our gifts. For her, a pair of boots which she had informed me weeks earlier were the most awesome boots ever. They were horribly overpriced, and not at all practical for the Minnesota winter, but this year I found I didn’t care so much about such things. For me, she picked a very lovely silver and turquoise tie tack, in the shape of a four-pointed star. “It’s the morning star,” she tells me, “a symbol of courageous spirit.” I thank her and hug her, and we spend the next few minutes sitting there watching the lights on the tree blink. Without carols to sing as we do so, though, the illusion of normality falls apart.
“What do you think is going to happen tomorrow?” She asks this in the small, scared voice that, once upon a time, I’d heard asking me to check for monsters in the closet.
I wanted to tell her now again that no, there was nothing in the closet, nothing would come to get her in the dark while she slept. “I don’t know,” I tell her instead.
“What if something does happen…?”
“What if we knew a year ago that the whole world was going to change during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games? What would knowing that, and worrying about it ahead of time, have changed?” I give her what I hope is an encouraging smile. “Whatever happens—if anything happens—we’ll just find a way to deal with it, just like we did with this.”
She nods, but I can tell she’s far from satisfied. I reach over and rub my hand in small circles between her shoulder blades. “Okay?” I ask.
That’s when the tears start rolling. She throws both arms around me and sobs into my shoulder, “I love you, Dad. If anything does happen, and I don’t get a chance to say it then…”
She trails off, and I feel my eyes getting hot, too. “I love you too, Abs,” I whisper, and squeeze with as much force as I dare use. We sit embracing like that for I don’t know how long, until her sobs finally subside, and then a while longer. The tree lights continue to blink silently above us.
Then she lifts her face and whispers, “I need to call Mom.” I nod, and reluctantly release her. She heads to the back of the house and I stay there on the floor, staring out the windows into the night. I repeat to myself that it does no good to worry about things that are out of our control…yet continue to do so.
All night, CNN runs a perverse little countdown clock in the lower left-hand corner of their screen showing the time to the second until 11:11 A.M. GMT, when the sun reaches its lowest point in the winter sky. Without actually making a decision to do so, Abby and I spend the night sitting up together. We both camp out on the couch, occasionally nodding off for maybe ten or fifteen minutes at a time, while the overnight anchors report on the various Winter Solstice Celebrations taking place across the Eastern Hemisphere.
Just after four o’clock local time, the tone of the programming shifts, and the anchors spend the next hour breathlessly speculating what will happen when the solstice sun reaches the galactic equator. An insert box on the screen shows a camera shot from the grounds of the Royal Observatory in London, focused on the mid-morning sun, as if they expect it to suddenly jump down and start dancing a jig on the horizon. Who knows, maybe I dozed through the point where they did predict it would do just that. It wouldn’t be any more unbelievable than anything else.
Finally, the countdown clock clicks to zero.
The sun stays just where it is, as if it were just any other day.
After what sounds like a collective sigh of relief from the television, the anchor team begins to laugh and joke, and expresses amusement that anyone could have made such a big deal over a simple astronomical event.
Then the screen bursts into static.
“What is it?” Abby asks as I grab the remote and scan through the other channels, and only find more of the same.
“Could just be the cable,” I say, even though neither of us believes that. “Or maybe sunspots.”
Abby jumps up, runs to her bedroom, and comes back with her smartphone. “Twitter is still up,” she tells me as her fingers play expertly over the small screen. “They’re saying all the TV went out in Los Angeles, too.”
I briefly wonder which of the celebrities she follows is up at this hour watching TV and Tweeting, then push that question aside. “Can you get on any of the news sites?”
She manipulates the touchscreen for several minutes, scowling, until she finds something that works. “Here’s NYTimes.com…no big breaking news headlines though…”
Maybe it is something as simple as sunspots, then, interfering with satellite transmission. Or even simpler, an odd coincidence. For the first time in at least twenty-four hours, I feel as if I could almost relax.
And then the static on the television clears, and is filled with the image of a man-sized Raven. “Peoples of America: be it known that the great Odin, ruler of Asgard, has laid claim to your lands. You shall from this day forward worship only the gods of Valhalla. As for those weak spirits who have previously claimed this continent, they too will be made to bend down on their knees and—” The screen returns to static once again.
“Oh, holy shit,” I mutter.
The civil war has begun.
Thick black clouds fill the sky well before the sun rises over America, turning the shortest day of the year into an unending night. The darkness is only broken by near continuous bolts of lightning firing back and forth across the sky. Gale force winds shake the walls, and fist-sized hailstones, followed by frogs, pound the roof. Abby and I spend the majority of the day huddled down in our semi-finished basement. The one time I dare to look out the front windows while running up and down stairs, I witness a Cerberus chasing after a police car. The city cops all had to swear oaths to the Native gods in order to keep their jobs; I don’t want to think what will happen to the poor bastards once the hellhound inevitably catches them.
Once I get our old analog set plugged back in and hooked back to the cable, we get to watch control of the media change hands more than a dozen times over the course of the morning. The couple of times the Native gods regain the upper hand, Curly Hair acts as their spokesman, and each time, his calm and polished demeanor slips further. “Our kind has shown exceptional generosity and restraint in the days since our return,” he rages in his latest on-air address. “We have been forgiving of those who came to this land and slaughtered our original worshippers; all we have asked is that you now pay us the obeisance they once did. This benevolence ends now!”
At another point, for just a few seconds, we see an actual human woman appear on camera. The video quality makes me think she is using a cheap webcam, and the audio is even worse. “My brothers and sisters in Christ, you must stay—” is what I think I hear her say, before she is cut off.
Amazingly, the internet is still up and running, though it’s slowed down to the point where it seems as if we’re using dial-up service again. There’s no more streaming video, and any kind of graphics take a painfully long time to load, but we’re at least getting information. How much of it is accurate, though, and what it all adds up to, is hard to say.
At some point in the mid-afternoon, we lose power, and the basement turns pitch black. But only for a moment, before a brilliant light fills the space, at the center of which is Iris. “Greetings from the gods of Olympus.”
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” I tell her.
“Gods do not take oaths and promises lightly.”
Abby jumps up from her seat. “What the hell is happening? What are you people doing?”
“The celestial alignment has opened wide the door which allowed our return five moons ago,” the goddess explains. “Our power has now reached its zenith, and soon all the pretenders to godhood shall be vanquished. The time is here, and I will have your answer now, David Anderson. Will you swear your devotion to us?”
So here it is. I stand up from the old futon we’d been sitting on, walk up directly in front of Iris, and say, “What happens if I do…and you lose?”
“We will not,” she decrees. “We have conquered their kind before, in the days of Alexander and Caesar, and we shall do so again.”
I shake my head. “This has been going on all day, this war of yours. Whatever door opened for you, it seems like it’s opened for all of you immortals. You’re all evenly matched.”
“Our victory is certain,” Iris insists. But somehow, I sense that the divine confidence she exudes is a bit forced.
“Really?” I reply, and then ask her, “What’s going on in New York?”
“Why are you concerned with that city above your own?” God or no, I have no trouble telling that I just struck a very raw nerve.
“Because I noticed something a while back,” I tell her. “All those viral videos from out of the Vatican? All of them go back to IP addresses located in New York City. And now this morning. Before CNN first went off the air, they were broadcasting from Atlanta. Since then, they’ve been airing exclusively out of their New York studio. Same with all the other networks, and the BBC. Nothing from Washington or London or anywhere else. The whole world is under assault, but New York is like this relative calm in the eye of the storm. Almost like you’re powerless to do anything there.”
“This one city is of no import!” she says, protesting too much. “We will not be defeated. In this, you must have faith!”
“‘Faith,’ my ass,” I shout back. “‘Faith’ is believing in a thing there’s no good reason to believe in. If your victory is certain, then what does faith have to do with it?”
“A great deal more than you can ever realize.” Her anger at being challenged is gone now, replaced by a deeply haunted expression. After a moment, she continues in a more desperate sounding tone. “David Anderson, we have not made this offer to you lightly. We know your potential. The gods need men like you to help them rule other men.” Then, having pained herself enough with this pleading of a mortal, she pulls herself up higher, so that her head is touching the floor joists overhead, and wields her staff at me like a sword. “This war will be over soon, and your future depends on the choice you make now. Will you swear your faith to the gods of Olympus?”
I look over to where Abby is still sitting, wide eyed and breath held, then turn back to Iris. “I will swear my allegiance and my loyalty. I cannot promise my faith.”
Iris takes a second to consider. “That is acceptable.”
“Under one condition,” I add.
“Do not test me, mortal…” Iris warns me, scowling.
But I stand firm and say, “I want my daughter safe with her mother in New York before I do anything for you.”
“What?!” Abby jumps up from the futon and puts herself between Iris and me. “Dad, no!!”
The betrayal in her eyes kills me, but I know this needs to be done. “Abby, you understand the danger I’m putting myself in here, and the danger I’d be putting you in.”
“Yes, I understand! But…”
“No buts,” I say, cutting off her protest. “Once the dust settles and things are back to…well, ‘normal’ would be optimistic, I guess…but when things are calmed down, we’ll bring you back.” I look back to Iris. “Do we have a deal?”
Iris nods and says, “I will see to the girl’s safe passage. Give me your vow.”
“I swear myself to Zeus and the gods of Olympus.”
And with that, both Iris and my daughter disappear in another brilliant flash of light.
I let out a hard, shuddering breath and collapse back onto the futon. “Oh, Christ,” I mutter, then correct myself: “Oh, Zeus.” It’s not exactly what they wanted of me, but I’m going to need to put some faith in these immortal sons of bitches, after all.
Three days later, word comes from the Vatican that Pope Benedict has abdicated. He is still alive, but given his failing health and the threat to the Christian faith, he has decided “after many hard days of prayer” that he needed to step aside for a younger, stronger leader. The new pontiff, Pope Boniface X, is expected to make his first public appearance sometime tomorrow morning. My new bosses try to spin this into a victory, since the Church is essentially giving up hope on the Second Coming. It’s far easier to win adherents for gods who walk the earth along with us, they say, than one who remains unknown.
I’m not sure how true this is, though. Like the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve become way too familiar with gods of late. I am one of the few mortals who has been made privy to the frustration the Olympians are feeling, not only because of their continued inability to breach the Papal Compound, but also the stalemate that has developed in their civil war, particularly in the battle for Manhattan. They seem utterly perplexed by whatever has made them so ineffectual within the boundaries of the city, but I for one could not be happier. Abby has refused to speak to me since I’ve sent her there, but having her pissed at me is a small price to pay for having her safe.
But I need to push these blasphemous thoughts aside for now. Like it or not, these are my gods now, and I need to do my utmost in my service to them.
The Mall of America is mobbed tonight, with crowds not seen since last Christmastime, all of them squeezed into the Main Rotunda area. I am positioned far above, standing on the platform atop the towering video screen, my own image being projected three stories high. I look down at the mob of the un-Called, former non-believers like me who, before the start of the Solstice War, thought they could go on with their everyday lives while paying only passing attention to the world that had changed. And now that they couldn’t, they needed someone to tell them what to do, and how to find favor with the gods.
They need me, the new High Priest of Zeus.
Gods help us all.
I take a deep breath, and smooth down my tie, my fingers brushing against the silver-and-turquoise star tie tack hidden under the jacket flaps. Then I put my hands up, and words come out of my mouth:
“Greetings from the gods of Olympus!”
I have no memory of what else I said, only that the crowd had cheered and chanted, and in the end had declared as a mass their full-throated devotion to Zeus and his pantheon. The bosses are pleased, even though a similar rally held by the Asgardians at Target Center had drawn more of the region’s Scandinavian and Germanic population. There are other similar rallies taking place all over the country, the gods building their number of worshippers, drawing their strength from them. There will be a new offensive before 2012 is out, and not even the gods know how that will turn out in the end.
It’s past midnight now, and the mall is empty once again. As I walk alone through its wide echoing corridors, I notice in the dim light that all the Solstice decorations have already been torn down. The traditional days-long celebration had been cut short, so as not to invite the connection with Christmas. The twenty-fifth comes without ribbons, tags, boxes or bags, and will go the same way.
I sigh as I step out into the silent night. Turns out there is no Santa Claus, after all.
Ireland
2250 B.C.
The people of the Tuatha de Danann had been divided by their Fomorian oppressors. The cliff top overlooking the western shore was their last stronghold. Others had scattered to the east, leaving this particular group sorely outnumbered.
Far below, aboard the Wave Sweeper, Manannan fixed his gaze on the three hundred foot sandstone wall that met the water just ahead. As he willed his ship to a full stop, the god of the sea turned toward the stern and raised his silver spear. Four smaller boats, each carrying twenty armed men, fell in line with Manannan’s vessel and dropped anchors of rock.
Of course, the Wave Sweeper no more required an anchor than she did sails or oars. The vessel moved and stopped at the whim of her master.
The sounds of shuffling and knocking on the deck drew Manannan’s attention. He made his way forward and reached out to the armored horse, running his hand along its side and neck to soothe its restlessness. Enbarr of the Flowing Mane bowed his head as Manannan began inspecting his armor.
“It will be a brutal day, my friend. The odds are not in our favor, but where the Fomorians are savage, we are clever. Though I am not so certain the Dagda will take my advice seriously.”
Manannan levitated off the deck and lowered himself gracefully onto Enbarr’s saddle. “But we shall see. Onward!”
Enbarr reared up on his hind legs and leapt from the ship, carrying Manannan atop the waves on a full gallop to the thin shoreline. From the clearing high above, several of the Dagda’s men shouted and cheered.
Manannan raised his spear. “Make way!”
The throng parted as eighty men carrying clubs, swords, and axes floated skyward, led by a sea god and his horse.
“Father, the Fomorians are nearly upon us. We are outnumbered. I suggest we withdraw.”
The Dagda, all-father and king of the Tuatha de Danann, hefted his club and pointed it toward the sea. His bass voice shook the trees. “Withdraw to where, Cermait? There is naught but water to our backs and I would see it turn crimson with our blood before letting the ogres take this land.”
“I fear both may happen within the hour, Father.”
“I would thank you to keep your blood where it belongs and out of my ocean.”
The Dagda turned just as Manannan leapt from his horse. “A most timely arrival, sea god.” The king’s dark gray beard and hair were matted in sweat and dried blood, as was his cloak. His club, able to slay a dozen Fomorians in one blow, was nearly as long as Manannan’s spear and thick as an oak tree.
Manannan bowed his head and gazed up at the Dagda, the tallest and most imposing of all the de Danann people. “I bring eighty men with me, but we—”
“The Fomorians are in sight!” All heads turned toward a middle aged man in a cloak and bronze breastplate running toward them from the opposite side of the clearing.
“How many?” The Dagda asked.
“Nearly six hundred, my lord. They are in the forest now.”
Cermait turned to Manannan. “Even with your men, we remain severely outnumbered.”
Manannan ignored him. “As I was about to say, my lord, the rest of our people are in battle with the Fomorians at Magh Tuiredh. They are led by Lugh.”
“Lugh! I do not trust him. He’s part Fomorian.”
“He has slain Balor,” Manannan noted.
“His own grandfather? King of the Fomorians?”
“Their queen, Cethlenn, now commands his forces,” Manannan said. “Our men are needed there as is your leadership. My boats stand ready.”
“It will take time to gather everyone,” Cermait said. “Many are wounded and the Fomorians will be upon us in moments. Some will need to sacrifice themselves to permit our escape. I volunteer, Father.”
Manannan held up a hand. “Might I make a suggestion?”
The Dagda nodded. “Go on.”
“Play the Uaithne.”
Cermait stepped forward, brow furrowed. “You wish our king to play a harp in the middle of a bloodbath?”
The Dadga put a hand on his son’s shoulder and the boy fell silent. As the king’s youngest, Cermait seemed compelled to overcompensate for his slight stature and effeminate appearance. A head of strawberry curls and a maiden’s waistline do not a fearsome warrior make.
“On the contrary, I hope to prevent one. Sire, you of all people know the power of the Uaithne. Its song can inspire joy where none exists, plunge the most jovial into the depths of sorrow—”
“—or put the most alert minded into a state of deep sleep.” The Dagda’s face brightened.
“Exactly, my lord, but only you and your harper can play the Uaithne. It will sing for no other and your harper is at Magh Tuiredh.”
“It is the sworn duty of a king to protect his people. Cermait, fetch the Uaithne. I will meet the monsters in the clearing, alone. As for you, Manannan, you’re quite clever for a ruler of fish.”
A grin lit the sea god’s face. “Well, you know what they say, sire. Fish is brain food.”
Twenty minutes later, the Fomorians reached the edge of the tree line, sweat glistening on their otherwise dull gray skin. They started forward, weapons at the ready. Abruptly, they halted and stared in confusion.
Seated on a rock in the center of the clearing, the Dagda plucked and strummed his harp of oak and gold. Its song was slow and soothing. The trees swayed to the melody. All the while, the king’s stomach lurched with a fear he would never admit to.
Finally, the Fomorians overcame their disbelief. Blades and blunt weapons were raised above hairless heads that shrieked a horrific battle cry. They charged forward—
—and toppled to the ground unconscious.
The Dagda exhaled and reached behind the rock to retrieve his club. He tucked it under his massive arm and resumed the song of slumber as he made his way out of the clearing. One of the Fomorians stirred as the Dagda stepped over him.
He smashed its skull with his club.
Fragarach never missed its mark. At Magh Turiedh, Manannan’s famous sword slashed, decapitated, and eviscerated one Fomorian after another. Across the battlefield to his left, Lugh plowed through a contingent with a sweep of his enormous axe. To the right, the Dagda’s brother Ogma wielded two swords, one formerly the property of Balor.
The Tuatha de Danann were no longer outnumbered.
As he gutted what was probably his hundredth Fomorian, Manannan gazed up at the top of a nearby hill. The Dagda swung his club to the left, felling ten ogres. Bringing the club around to the right, a dozen more were sent tumbling down the steep rocky slope.
He is in his glory, Manannan thought. No harp’s magic will be needed this day.
His wry smile faded as a cloaked figure coalesced out of thin air behind the Dagda. The figure twisted in mid-air and thrust a dagger into the back of his neck. Its blade pierced straight though. Blood sprayed from the king’s throat.
With a howl of rage, Manannan threw his silver spear but the figure vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The spear continued through the air, impaling two Fomorian soldiers as they descended on the fallen king.
Manannan leapt the impossible distance, landing atop the hill beside the Dagda’s supine form. There were no Fomorians in sight now. Blood spurted from the Dagda’s throat with every breath.
Reaching beneath his armor, Manannan tore a strip of cloth from his cloak. “Forgive me, my lord.” Gently, he turned the Dagda’s head to the side and yanked the dagger. Swiftly, he wrapped the cloth around the king’s neck.
“They are retreating!”
“The Fomorians are retreating!”
“We are victorious!”
Manannan ignored the cheers and shouts from below. His king was dying.
The Dagda reached up and pulled Manannan close. He whispered one word before passing out.
Cethlenn.
The Dagda survived the six-day journey east to Brú na Boinne where the Tuatha de Danann had settled years before. All the while, three physicians tended to the king, attempting to stop the persistent bleeding, administering medicines and otherwise fretting. Cermait remained at his father’s side during the journey.
Reaching out with his mind, Manannan had sent word to Ogma and Bodb Derg, the Dagda’s eldest son. After the battle, they had pursued the remaining few Fomorians to the coast to cast them out of the land.
By nightfall, the king had developed a fever. His breath came in shallow gasps. The physicians feared that the dagger’s blade might have been coated in poison but they could not determine its nature.
“Cermait, where is the Uaithne?” Manannan asked in a hushed tone.
“With the harper in his tent.”
“Why don’t you bring him here? Have him play softly to soothe your father.”
Wordlessly, Cermait left the tent. A moment later, there was shouting from across the camp. Manannan pointed to the physicians. “Remain with the king.”
He hurried over to a mob surrounding a small tent. “Report.”
Inside, Cermait stood over the body of the harper. Blood seeped down his chest from a wound in the center of his throat. He was a mere boy, perhaps a year older than Cermait. His eyes and mouth were opened wide. Manannan reached for a nearby blanket of cowhide and draped it over the body.
“No Fomorian has set foot in this camp.”
“None that you saw,” Manannan growled.
The following morning, the Dagda was buried beside a massive oak tree, the grave marked with his club and surrounded by white stones. The Tuatha de Danann sang an ancient song of brave warriors, bloody battles, and the triumph of gods.
But there was no music.
Under a crescent moon and a canopy of stars, the Dagda waited aboard Wave Sweeper. At the bow, Manannan leapt from his horse and paused before making his way astern. There, two gods stared at the sea in silence.
“I never thought I would see this day,” Manannan said finally.
“Nor did I.” The Dagda smiled. “I had hoped to outlive all of you. We have won the war and our people are safe, though I fear their trials are not over. Still, I am prepared to go home.”
Escorting the spirits of kings to the otherworld was a task for which Manannan had volunteered centuries before. He had never regretted it.
Until now.
“You are the greatest king our people have ever known,” Manannan solemnly informed his former liege. “It was an honor to fight by your side. Be assured, sire, I will avenge you if it takes all eternity.”
The Dagda nodded. “I will listen for the song of the Uaithne. Perhaps one day, it will bring me back to this land.”
Manannan said no more as Wave Sweeper turned toward the open sea and sailed into the night.
Cethlenn plucked at the gold strings of the Uaithne, ran her dagger across them, slammed the harp against the side of her boat. Aside from the thud of wood against wood, it made no other sound.
“Useless,” she seethed.
“What are your orders, your highness?”
Cethlenn whirled on her personal guard. “You will keep rowing!”
She stood the harp on the edge of the boat. “As for this thing…” The queen plunged her dagger between the strings, slashing every one of them. Satisfied, she tossed it overboard and watched until it disappeared into the cold darkness.
“…it will never be played again.”
Irish Sea
2018 A.D.
Aboard the Daly Treasure, Captain Sean Daly watched the monitor with mild fascination. Five hundred feet below the surface of the Irish Sea, his daughter and her future husband had recovered a baffling artifact.
“Almost there, dad.”
Sean removed his headset, ruffling his thinning gray hair. He limped out onto the open deck, wincing at the pain in his right knee. Were it not for the bullet wound that had caused his discharge two decades ago, he might still be serving in the Navy. But then, I’d be working for demons now. It was the knee that forced him to keep his weight in check. That and his love of diving. At fifty-one, Sean enjoyed looking trim in a wet suit.
The Ladybird broke the surface to port. After a moment, the bubble hatch atop the submersible flipped open and Meghan Daly stood up. She stretched toned, freckled arms over a head of saffron hair before pointing to the object clutched in the claws of the robotic arm, “Check that out.”
“Hold on.” Sean retrieved a pike pole from the deck and leaned over the edge of the boat. “Bring it here.”
Sitting beside Meghan, Connor Maguire rotated the robotic arm, bringing the open triangle of wood and gold closer to the boat.
Sean threaded the pole through the artifact. “OK, got it. Let it go.” The claw opened and Sean pulled it in. “Has some weight to it.”
“It’s a medieval style harp, isn’t it?” Meghan asked.
He lowered it gently to the deck. “Certainly seems like it.”
“Wonder how old it is?”
“Hard to say. It’s in fairly good shape—minus the strings, of course. Could be a fairly new reproduction. We should get it inside and—”
“Dad!”
Sean looked up to see Meghan pointing to starboard.
Closing rapidly, a silver superyacht glided across the water in absolute silence. Sean estimated it at one hundred and fifty feet long, just over twice the size of his own boat. Its bow came to a sharp narrow point. Two pylons extended from either side amidships and curved downward, ending in long struts. It resembled a sleek spacecraft more than a seagoing vessel.
The most striking aspect, however, was the man standing motionless on the bow. He was tall and thin with a long dark coat. In one hand, he held a spear that glinted in the morning sun and his eyes were fixed on the Daly Treasure.
Sean grabbed two mooring lines and tossed them to Meghan and Connor. “Tie her off and get aboard, quickly!”
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
“Just do it!”
Less than a minute later, Meghan and Connor were climbing aboard when the yacht came to a stop about sixty feet away. The man’s hair and trimmed beard were auburn and he was dressed completely in black. He raised his silver spear in greeting before leaping from the bow. Meghan gasped as the man landed with ease atop the water and strolled over to the Daly Treasure.
With an affable smile, the man bowed his head. “Captain Sean Daly, I presume.”
“That’s right.”
“Permission to come aboard?”
Sean knew the request was a mere courtesy. This man—no, this being—was one of the ‘gods’. Do I have a choice?
“Uh, permission granted.”
With that, the man levitated off the water and touched down gracefully on the deck.
“Forgive my intrusion, explorers. My name is Manny and I believe you have just found something that belongs to my people.”
“And what would that be?”
“The Uaithne.”
“The what?” Connor asked.
“The harp,” Sean replied, never averting his gaze. So maybe it’s a relic after all. Manny, Manny…there’s something familiar about him. “Everything we find must be brought back to the government of Southern Ireland for inspection. We’re not thieves, sir.”
Manny spread his arms wide, his smile brightening. “I accuse no one, children. You live under Fomorian rule and are thus indentured servants. Give to Ireland what is Ireland’s. Give to the Tuatha de Danann what is ours.”
“The Fomos won’t see it that way,” Connor said.
“The Fomorians were the ones who discarded the instrument ages ago,” Manny said. “Those animals wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“How would you know?”
“Connor!” Sean snapped. The boy was well built and always ready for a fight, a combination that sometimes gave his mouth more liberty than it should have. In other words, a typical Irishman.
“Let’s just say I’ve been around for a very long time,” Manny replied.
“Oh my God,” Sean blurted as realization struck. “You’re Manannan.”
Manny pointed at Sean. “You’re very perceptive but Manny has a more modern sound. Don’t you think?”
Silent up to this point, Meghan moved beside her father. “Who is this?”
“Manannan mac Lir. He was the god of the Isle of Man and of the sea,” Sean explained.
Meghan and Connor looked from Sean to Manny. Almost in unison, they took a step back.
“And I am again, that’s the beauty of it,” Manny winked. “Though I dare say I treat the Manx people far better than Cethlenn treats you. Now, I would love to stay and regale you with exhilarating tales of yore but I must be off. The harp, if you please. It would be most unpleasant if I had to take it by force.”
“If the Fomos find out we turned it over to you, they’ll kill us.”
Manny extended a hand. “Then come with me. Live free in my kingdom with open access to the internet, television, telecommunications, unrestricted travel. The Tuatha de Danann are beneficent gods. You should see the parties we throw.”
“Uh, give us a moment, please.” Sean ushered the others into the cabin. “I know a bit about this man and his kind. If this harp is what I think it is, it supposedly belonged to one of their kings and has magical powers.”
“Are you turning it over to him?” Connor asked, running a hand through his walnut brown hair.
“You heard his offer.”
Meghan’s hazel eyes widened. “Dad, you can’t be serious. Leave with him? You don’t really believe he’s a god.”
“There is only one God for me, you know that, but the Fomos have taken everything from the people since all of these so-called gods returned six years ago. It kills me to abandon my home but I don’t want to see my grandchildren raised in the realm of monsters who cull the human population for food! Think about it, we’re the only family we have. Connor’s is scattered around the globe. None of us have any real attachments in the south anymore. If your mother were still alive today, she’d agree with me. This is our chance!”
Meghan and Connor looked at one another. She reached for his hand. He took it without hesitation.
“That’s the spirit,” Manannan called.
“Aren’t you also the god that escorted the dead to the afterlife?” Sean asked.
“That was one of the many services I provided, but fear not, my children. I’m saving that for one who is far more deserving.”
It was the largest castle Sean had ever visited. Large, perhaps, but not old. Until now, there had never been a castle in Port Erin, let alone a seventy thousand square meter fortress. While it was constructed in ancient style, complete with battlements around the roof, the ashlar veneer was not at all weathered and the electronic surveillance blended in as if planned rather than retrofitted.
“It even has central air,” Manannan was saying. “The marvels your people have created!”
“This is amazing,” Connor said. “What do you call this place?”
“Castle Dagda.”
“How long did it take to build?” Meghan asked.
“Oh, it’s still under construction, but we were able to move in after the first year.”
“Where did you stay before that?” Connor wondered aloud.
Manannan grinned. “Bay Hotel. Lovely place.”
Just then, a large white bird with feathers of silver and blue swooped over them and landed on the path ahead. After a moment, it began to grow and contort until it transformed into the most gorgeous woman Sean had ever set eyes on. She was barefoot, in form fitting jeans and a shimmering silver blouse. She stood a head shorter than Manannan.
“You found the Dagda’s harp?” she asked in a soft voice.
Perhaps it was her long wavy hair of sky blue that matched her eyes, or the curves of her perfect figure, or her smooth, unblemished skin. Now that I could worship.
“Actually, my love, the credit goes to these intrepid explorers.” Manannan introduced the divers to his wife, Fand. “I merely convinced them that we needed it more than the Fomorians.”
Fand held out her hand. Sean took it and gently kissed her knuckles. “You truly are a goddess of the sea.”
She graced him with a breathtakingly sweet smile. “Well, aren’t you the flatterer?”
Meghan and Connor merely bowed their heads nervously. Fand returned a smile before glancing at the harp. “It is in rather pathetic condition.”
Manannan ran his fingers along the ancient engravings in the harp’s body. “I shall have it restored by the finest craftsman on the island.”
“Even still, you must find someone to play it. You must still locate the Uaithne.”
“Pardon me, ma’am, but I thought we did,” Sean said.
“You have found the instrument,” she explained, “yet all instruments require a player. Without one, the other is useless. Yet only two can play this harp. When the Dagda was unavailable to do so, he appointed another whose talents were equal to his own. The young man and the harp were as one, both called Uaithne.”
“Some say the Uaithne’s talents surpassed that of the king,” Manannan added. “But such remarks were usually uttered in hushed tones. The Dagda carried a big stick.”
“Where is the Dagda?”
Sorrow clouded the sea god’s face. “Dead, I’m afraid. He died from a wound inflicted by Cethlenn many centuries ago. The saddest day of my life was escorting the Dagda to the otherworld. I swore that I would avenge him. With your help, children, I am one step closer.”
“With a harp?”
“The Uaithne’s music can inspire joy, inflict sorrow, or send its listeners into a state of deep sleep,” Fand explained. “But as I said, it will sing only for the Dagda or Uaithne.”
Her mate brightened. “And thanks to your remarkable internet, my children, I may have found her.”
“Oh, Manannan. Uaithne was a young man. Don’t you remember?”
“At one time perhaps, but I believe he has been reincarnated as a young woman, an extremely gifted musician with golden hair and eyes of violet. She does not merely play the harp, she makes love to it like no other I’ve witnessed since ages past.”
Fand crossed her arms. “And just how did you discover this woman?”
Manannan laughed. “YouTube.”
A stocky young man approached, dressed in Manx military uniform. He stopped before god and goddess and bowed deeply. “We have received a call from Ogma, my lord. He wishes to speak with you.”
“Very well, I’ll take it in the war room. Thank you, lieutenant.” Manannan turned to his guests. “Fand will show you to your temporary living quarters. You are guests here at the castle and she loves giving tours.” With that, the god of the sea hurried off.
http://www.amazon.com/ReDeus-Divine...ie=UTF8&qid=1366855740&sr=1-1&keywords=redeus
Book Description
Publication Date: July 19, 2012
The gods have returned. All of them! The change promised by the ending of the Mayan Calendar in 2012 manifested itself in an unexpected manner. Every pantheon of gods and goddesses, from every belief the world over, has returned ... changing the world forever. As the pantheons settle into their ancestral lands, they vie for worshippers, gaining or losing power along the way. They find the world of man a bewildering, crazy quilt, and each wishes to remake their lands in their own image. Come and meet some of the inhabitants of this strangely familiar world in eleven new tales that explore what it means to worship in this new reality. A Knight Templar hunting mysteries. A rookie pitcher with a unique belief system. A wounded solider returned to battle by a goddess. A reporter who isn’t sure what to believe. A homicide detective on the Manhattan beat. A man out to kill the gods. A single father trying to survive in a world without Santa Claus. And many more! Chronicling this new tomorrow are Dave Galanter, Allyn Gibson, Phil Giunta, Robert Greenberger, Paul Kupperberg, William Leisner, Scott Pearson, Aaron Rosenberg, Lawrence M. Schoen, Dayton Ward, and Steven H. Wilson. Join them and discover a world where everything old is new again—even the gods themselves.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Aaron Rosenberg is an award-winning, bestselling novelist, children’s book author, and game designer. His novels include the humorous science fiction novel No Small Bills, the historical dark fantasy For This Is Hell, the Dread Remora space-opera series, and the O.C.L.T. supernatural thriller series, plus novels for Star Trek, Warhammer, WarCraft, and Eureka. His children’s books include Bandslam: The Novel, books for iCarly, PowerPuff Girls, and Transformers Animated, and the original series Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles. His RPG work includes Asylum, Spookshow, the Origins Award-winning Gamemastering Secrets, The Supernatural Roleplaying Game, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and The Deryni Roleplaying Game. You can visit him online at gryphonrose.com or follow him on Twitter @gryphonrose. Having grown up on fantasy, science fiction, and comic books, Robert Greenberger has reveled working in these fields as an adult. He has worked as an editor or executive for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Starlog Press, Gist Communications, and Weekly World News. As a freelance writer, he has written for all ages and numerous genres, notably the media tie-in field with several Star Trek novels to his credit. He won the Scribe Award for his novelization of Hellboy II: The Golden Army and has gone on to co-found Crazy 8 Press. Recent releases include The Art of Howard Chaykin, co-writing Stan Lee’s How to Write Comics, and co-writing The Essential Superman Encyclopedia. He makes his home in Connecticut where he has been training to become a high school English teacher. For more, see www.bobgreenberger.com.
Product Details
- Paperback: 330 pages
- Publisher: Clockworks (July 19, 2012)
Crazy Eight Press is an imprint of Clockworks.
Copyright © 2012 by ReDeus, LLC
Cover illustration by Anton Kokarev
Interior illustrations by Carmen Nuñez Carnero
Design by Aaron Rosenberg
ISBN 978-1-892544-03-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address
Clockworks at 5034 63rd Street, Woodside, NY 11377.
www.crazy8press.com
First edition
Copyright © 2012 by ReDeus, LLC
Cover illustration by Anton Kokarev
Interior illustrations by Carmen Nuñez Carnero
Design by Aaron Rosenberg
ISBN 978-1-892544-03-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address
Clockworks at 5034 63rd Street, Woodside, NY 11377.
www.crazy8press.com
First edition
Contents
INTRODUCTION
by Robert Greenberger and Aaron Rosenberg
INTRODUCTION
by Robert Greenberger and Aaron Rosenberg
THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS
by William Leisner
by William Leisner
THERE BE IN DREAMS NO WAR
by Phil Giunta
by Phil Giunta
AXEL’S SONG
by Steven H. Wilson
by Steven H. Wilson
THE TALE OF THE NOUVEAU TEMPLAR
by Scott Pearson
by Scott Pearson
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
by Dave Galanter
by Dave Galanter
CONSCRIPT
by Dayton Ward
by Dayton Ward
THE GINGER KID
by Allyn Gibson
by Allyn Gibson
BALANCING THE SCALES
by Aaron Rosenberg
by Aaron Rosenberg
COCA XOCOLaTL
by Lawrence M. Schoen
by Lawrence M. Schoen
A GOD WALKS INTO A BAR
by Robert Greenberger
by Robert Greenberger
NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME
by Paul Kupperberg
by Paul Kupperberg
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Introduction
Some writers talk about their stories being acts of divine inspiration. Well, that would certainly be appropriate here! It’s hard to say where the initial spark came from, honestly. Especially since the three of us (Bob, Paul, and Aaron) had already been friends for years. But somehow we got to talking about how much fun it would be to come up with a project together. We wanted it to be something big, something bold, and something both familiar and unique. Somewhere in there, we had the idea of a modern-day setting that involved the ancient gods. Part of the fascination was in how those gods would react to this new world, with all its cars and plane and computers and cell phones and social media sites and so on. How would such things mesh with the old ways of sacrifice and ritual and observance? And what would become of faith when the gods walked among humanity openly?
Thus was ReDeus born. The three of us bashed the idea around, worked out a basic framework, and come up with a game plan. We would each create a main character, and a story arc, and then gradually interweave them. We had grand ambitions, and noble ones.
But time and tide wait for no man, nor for any collaborative project. We each had other work to do, and somehow we couldn’t quite find the time to pull ReDeus together. Paul had to bow out due to other commitments, and rather than shoulder the whole creative burden by ourselves we brought in another buddy, Steve Savile, who Aaron was working on some other projects with. Still things progressed slowly. Eventually Steve found he was overworked and had to step back, but then Paul freed up some time and rejoined us. And we agreed to forge ahead with all due speed.
But at this point we decided to start things a little differently. We were each writing an initial story with our main characters, but we wanted more—more variety, more of a look at this brave new world, more exploration of its people and its themes. So we turned to some friends, each of them talented writers themselves. We told them about ReDeus, and we invited them to take up quill or keyboard and pen a story of their own to add to the fun.
And, luckily for us, many of them chose to take us up on our offer.
What you hold is the result of that. This is the first collection of ReDeus stories. If you enjoy them, it will not be the last.
—Robert Greenberger and Aaron Rosenberg
The Year Without a Santa Claus
by William Leisner
by William Leisner
When I was eight years old, my parents took me to the big Dayton’s department store downtown one snowy Saturday afternoon, so I could give Santa my Christmas wish list. I was at the age when I still believed, but based on the teasing of other kids and my own logical inferences, I’d begun to have doubts. So I asked him point blank as I sat on his knee, “Are you really real?”
The bearded old man dropped his jolly smile, looked me straight in the eye, and told me, “Well, that’s for you to decide for yourself, isn’t it?”
I recall that long-ago visit as I sit on a bench just beyond the mall court outside Macy’s, my bags set at my feet, watching the line of children and parents here to pay their holiday respects.
“I don’ wanna see the Easter Bunny,” one little blond-headed boy whines to his mother. “I wanna see Santa!”
“It’s not the Easter Bunny,” his mother tells him, in that clench-jawed, please-stop-embarrassing-me-in-public voice my own mother so often used with me. “It’s Jiibayaabooz, the Spirit Rabbit. He’s the one who will be giving us presents and blessings this year.”
She’s lying to the boy, of course. The guy sitting in what traditionally has been Santa’s throne is indeed wearing the same bunny costume the mall drags out at Easter time. He’s missing his basket of colored eggs, and the ribbon around his neck has been replaced by a necklace of beads and animal teeth. It’s not even a good likeness of the Jiibayaabooz who manifested, along with all the other pantheons of gods, shortly after the Olympians’ disruption of the Olympics open ceremonies in July. But the mall’s management, bless their capitalistic little hearts, are determined to save the holiday formerly known as Christmas, now renamed the Winter Solstice Celebratory Season.
The boy, who’s about six, is having none of it, though. “No! I wanna see Santa!” he says again, his face turning red, and his eyes just on the verge of flooding over. The other parents in line stare at these two with nervous expressions. They’ve come to pay homage to our new god, and are clearly worried about how he will react to this child’s unholy outburst.
My heart, though, goes out to the poor kid. I would far rather see Santa here, too. But he’s been outlawed along with the Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It seems silly to me. Yes, Santa is based on the Christian Saint Nicholas, and yes, flying all around the globe in a single night bestowing gifts on all the children with whom he finds favor is pretty god-like behavior. But everyone over the age of ten understands that he’s just a symbol, a myth.
Then again, up until a couple of months ago, so were the gods.
As the mother tries desperately to calm her son, a pair of mall security officers approach, one man and one woman, moving with the kind of urgency you don’t normally see from rent-a-cops. “Ma’am,” the man says, “we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
“No, everything’s all right,” she says as she pulls her child close, burying his tear-streaked face against her stomach. “He’s just tired and cranky, that’s all.”
The guard shakes his head, and reaches to put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re causing a disruption, and disturbing the other patrons.”
“No, everything’s fine,” she says, cringing in on herself as she tries to shrink away. Seeing that she’s not going to go along quietly, the second guard circles around behind. As the woman backs away from the one guard, the other grabs her wrist and twists back and up, causing her to cry out in pain. “You have to let me pay homage!” she shouts as she’s lead away by the female guard, with her partner carrying the now hysterical child behind her. “We are believers, Jiibayaabooz!” she shouts back over her shoulder. “I pledge myself to you!”
“What’s going on, Dad?”
I’ve been so absorbed in the drama I didn’t even notice my own kid rejoin me. At fourteen, Abby is already nearly as tall as me, and with her long chestnut hair pulled back away from her face in a ponytail, she’s almost the spitting image of her mother at her age. “Oh, nothing,” I tell her as I stand and start to gather up my stuff. “Did you find everything you were looking for?”
“Pffft,” she answers, and punctuates it with an eye roll. “None of these stores have anything.” This, in spite of the fact that I count four full shopping bags in her two hands. Then she drops her voice and adds, “Stupid foreign gods.”
I know that this sentiment is not only due to the fact that the Jade Emperor has declared a trade embargo, causing a shortage of cheap imported goods. Abby’s best friend, Sue Bakken, had left town just before the start of the school year for Oslo, along with her whole family and almost half a million other members of Minnesota’s Norwegian-American population. Of course, it’s not only the Norse gods calling the descendants of their former followers home; the same holds true for the Southern Europeans, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and so on. They’re saying that the U.S. population has dropped more than ten percent due to emigration over the past four months, and might fall as much as thirty percent by the end of 2013.
We head out toward the parking garage, past darkened storefronts covered over with oversized posters of generic winter scenes. Overhead, hidden speakers play the same non-season-specific pop music they did all year round. Once out the door, it’s a short walk to our car. No one would ever guess that this was what the Mall of America was like on Black Friday.
For the first time, there are no leftovers in the house this weekend after Thanksgiving—our new divine overlords decreed that, if the holiday was meant as a celebration of a bountiful harvest, then any excess should be offered up to them. So tonight, we dine on franks and beans. Abby texts with her friends throughout the meal—I’d long ago given up the battle to keep the phone away from the dinner table. While she chats about whatever it is teenage girls chat about, I absently watch CNN. Riots have broken out across Germany, in protest of the huge influx of immigrants answering Odin’s call to return to the fatherland. The Vatican issued a statement claiming Pope Benedict is recovering from a bad case of the flu, and calling reports from the Italian press that he was on his deathbed “pagan propaganda.” And Washington is still in chaos, just as it has been since the Constitution was suspended and the November 6th elections cancelled. It’s almost funny to see some of the same people who spent four straight years disparaging Barack Obama now raging over the way he was driven from the White House.
Then, with the headlines out of the way, they switch back to the interview set, where the pretty young host is sitting and chatting with a Manitou, who she introduces as Curly Hair, the gods’ emissary to what’s left of the U.S. government. The spirit being has the head of a buffalo, and the body of a lean but muscular man covered in brown fur.
“Well, Sierra,” he says in response to a softball question, “most modern Americans have forgotten that your Founding Fathers, as they were forming their new nation, were influenced far more by the example of the Iroquois Confederacy than they were by any Greek model of democracy…” Curly Hair speaks in a strong, clear voice that demands respect, but watching him, I can’t help but think he looks more like a Pixar CGI-rendered character than anything else.
“What about those who are concerned about the loss of religious freedom,” the interviewer asks next.
Curly Hair chuckles at that. “Religious freedom was a fine concept for a time when the gods were hidden, and you humans had to guess what it was we required of you. But now that we have returned and reestablished our rule, to allow individuals the right to deny reality would be—”
Suddenly, the television goes dark. My immediate thought is another power outage, but the lights remain on, and at the same time, Abby mutters an annoyed “What the—?” as she pokes at the darkened screen of her phone. Before I can stand up or do anything else, I feel a sudden change in the air, like an electrical storm had suddenly rolled in from the living room. Then the kitchen fills with an unearthly light, and once it fades, we are in the presence of a goddess.
“Greetings from the gods of Olympus, David Anderson and Abigail Anderson,” says Iris, herald of Hera, in a voice like the purest music. She is tall and dark-haired, with an olive complexion and a pair of golden wings. She gestures with her caduceus as she tells us, “I come to offer you blessings in this season of celebration and renewal.”
I sigh and tell her, “Not interested.”
Her beatific smile turns a bit venomous at that. “It’s rather disrespectful to dismiss a message from the gods so,” she says. “To say nothing of the dismissal of a goddess herself.”
I start to shiver in spite of myself. There is no questioning the power this being and her kind wield, and there have been more than enough stories about the inventive ways they have exercised those powers since their arrival. But, dammit, I am a 21st century man, and I refuse to simply swallow this shit whole. “With respect, Iris, I’m only trying to make this easier for you. You want me and my daughter to leave our home, move to the Mediterranean, and to worship Zeus and his pantheon.” We’d been offered similar invitations from the Asgardians, the Tuatha de Danaan, Ukko, et cetera. The Anderson family tree has roots all over the planet (even Africa, as I recently learned from Anansi when he let me know great-great-great-grandma was a light-skinned runaway from Virginia), and that being the case, we showed up on the radar screens of all these old gods looking for new adherents. By the same token, we didn’t feel the kind of irresistible pull they exerted on so many others.
“You are bold to speak so bluntly,” Iris tells me. “And bold men make for strong nations. This is why I come to you here today. May I?” Iris gestures to one of the two empty chairs at the kitchen table, and it takes my brain an extra second to realize this goddess is asking my permission to take a seat. At last I nod, and Iris slides gracefully into the chair. She folds her wings in and her luminosity dims ever so slightly. She even seems to shrink a bit, and I realize she’s making an effort to come down to our mortal level, and present herself as “just folks.”
“You are mistaken in guessing the purpose of my visit,” she tells me, laying her staff on the table and leaning forward on her elbows. “Until now, yes, we gods have been calling our followers together, gathering and consolidating our strength. But, these actions have had consequences that we did not foresee.”
“I thought gods were supposed to be all-knowing,” Abby pipes in, apparently following her old man’s example. I wish, not for the first time, I wasn’t such a lousy role model.
Luckily, Iris shows some indulgence. “If you’ve ever read any of your so-called ‘myths’, you’d know that we are far from omniscient or omnipotent. Those kind of impossible abilities are only ascribed to the imaginary gods of monotheistic fairy tales.”
Then she turns back to me. “We have been gone a long time, and the world has changed in ways we never anticipated. That so many of our children would cross the ocean to this continent, and so completely overwhelm it? And come to think of it as their own? It would have been unthinkable in the old times, when only the bravest of men would ever dream of wandering far beyond their own village. And even if they had, we never would have foreseen how thoroughly our children would decimate the savages born of this land.” She smiles at me, as if she thinks she’s paying me an immense compliment. “Though there was a necessity to calling our followers back to their ancestral home, we realize now that it would be imprudent to completely abandon the Americas and relinquish it to those from whom you had wrested control.”
“So, you mean to say—”
“If you would,” she interrupts sharply, “let me tell you what I mean to say, without trying to outguess me.” After a challenging pause which I decide not to accept, she continues. “What I mean to say is, the gods of Olympus see no reason, in this world as it is today, to limit ourselves to such a small territory. We mean to have these lands as well.”
“Even though the Indian gods have reclaimed them?” Abby asks.
Iris looks like she may actually laugh. “While I understand how any immortal being must seem as gods to you, let me assure you that we do not consider Coyote and Rabbit to be at the same level as Zeus and Hera.”
I’m tempted to ask what they think of Santa, but better sense prevails. Instead, I ask the bigger question: “And what does all of this have to do with us?”
“As I said before, it takes bold men to build a strong nation. Those whose will cannot be easily swayed, but who also have the wisdom to see reason, and to make proper judgments on that basis. An Olympian nation in America will need such men.”
Iris stands then, taking up her staff and letting her wings spread wide once again. “The time is coming soon, when your wisdom and courage will be tested. And if you prove yourself to have these qualities, David Anderson,” she says, her arms upraised in a kind of benediction, “you will find yourself greatly rewarded.”
“Greatly rewarded, huh?” My ex-wife Victoria gives me an oddly disconcerted look from the computer flatscreen. “And what does that mean, exactly?”
“No idea,” I tell her.
“You didn’t ask?” she replies, using her cross examination voice. In the five years since the split, we haven’t spoken directly to one another more than a dozen times, and that voice is a big reason why I try to avoid it. But, when Abby mentioned our visitor to her mother during their weekly Skype chat, she wanted to hear the details from me.
“Yes, I asked, but all she would say is ‘In time, in time.’ Just the typical cryptic god-speak.”
“But you’re not considering it, are you?”
I put my hands up and shrug at her. “I don’t even know what ‘it’ is I’m supposed to consider.”
“Does it matter?” She leans forward, closer to the webcam lens. “David, these so-called gods are not to be trusted.”
It’s more than slightly ironic, having this woman advise me on whom to trust. But, something in her tone catches my attention. “Why do you say that?”
“Open your eyes, David. Look at the absolute chaos these beings have created all over the planet. These are not benevolent gods. They don’t give a shit about you or any of the rest of us.”
Like the excellent lawyer she is, she builds a good case. After the divorce, her firm offered a promotion and transfer to their main offices in New York, and she’s become one of their fastest rising stars since then.
“And they’re obviously only trying to play on your ego to pull you to their side,” she continues. “I mean, come on. You’re a forty-year-old middle manager. What makes you so special to them?”
It’s a perfectly fair and legitimate question, but Tori can’t help but put that little extra personal dig at me in there. “Well, maybe the gods see something in me others can’t,” I shoot back, just a tad too defensive.
“David, seriously, do not trust them. You need to think of Abby here. If you let her get tangled up in this unholy spider’s web they’re weaving for you, I swear to every god there is, I will challenge for custody, and you will never see her again.”
I glower at her and try to hold back an angry sputtering retort which I know I’ll only regret later. In the end, though, I have to click the “end call” icon without a goodbye, just before I let loose a stream of obscenities at the blank screen.
For whatever reason, the gods seem befuddled by the internet. They’ve managed to take solid control of television and the newspapers, and make sure their version of any news story is presented as truth, and any others as rumor. The situation at the Vatican is a perfect example: it’s been over four months since the Pope’s last public appearance, and now the news channels are reporting Roman police have arrested over a hundred Catholic cardinals trying to sneak into the Papal enclave, presumably to choose his successor.
But if you go online, you’ll find reports that it’s all a complete fabrication by Zeus and friends, to demoralize the Christian community. Blurry camera phone videos claim to show Benedict alive and well, and giving his blessing to a near-empty Saint Peter’s Square. CNN and the BBC are prevented from reporting it, they say, and it’s only because of a few determined members of the faithful that the truth is able to get out. Whether these are legitimate or not, the thing that surprises me most is that they manage to get out on the Web at all.
And then there’s the even more suspicious stuff. “Did you know the Hopis believed the end of the world is coming December 21st?” Abby asks without looking up from her phone’s internet browser screen.
“You mean the Mayans, don’t you?”
“No, the Hopis, too,” she says. “There’s a prophecy that predicted all the stuff that happened since the whites came over, and then the final sign is that a ‘dwelling-place in the heavens’ falls to earth. This site says that dwelling-place in the heavens is where all the old gods have been living all these years.”
I tilt my head and give her a look. “And what do we say about believing something just because it’s posted to the internet?”
“But there’s also a link to NASA’s website,” she persists. “The convergence that the Mayans predicted? With the sun and the equator of the Milky Way? There’s also going to be an increase in sunspots then! And there are other predictions that the world is ending this year, too, by the Egyptians, and the Bible, and Nostradamus…”
“That I know is wrong,” I say. “Nostradamus predicted the world would end in 1999. And there was all this same kind of doomsday garbage circulating then, too, with planetary alignments and the panic over Y2K…”
“What’s Y2K?” Abby asks.
Before I can launch into my wise old man lecture on the history of the late 20th century, an explosion rattles the windows. We both jump up to look outside, and see the house across the street engulfed in flames.
We quickly pull on our boots and jackets and rush out, as do most of the neighbors up and down Washburn Avenue. It’s well below freezing with the sun down, and oddly, the burning house doesn’t seem to be giving off any heat. The McArdle family stands at the end of their driveway watching the conflagration. Off to one side, a seven-foot-tall black bear stands, forelegs crossed over its chest, giving them a reproachful glare. The Manitou says something to them I can’t hear, until we’ve gotten halfway across the street. “…and such disobedience cannot be tolerated,” the bear spirit growls nastily at them. “From anyone!” it then adds loudly for the benefit of the gathering neighbors.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Peter McArdle says, his voice almost cracking in restrained anger. Pete is, without exception, the nicest guy in the neighborhood. He’s the guy who’ll offer to come over with his snow blower right after a big storm, or volunteer to serve as mediator for any kind of petty property disputes. Any time there’s a birth or death in the family of anyone on the block, he and Kay are on their doorstep the following day with a big casserole dish or full Tupperware container. They are the last people on Earth who deserve to be burnt out of their house two weeks before Christmas. “We were just watching a video in our own home. Honestly, what kind of god is so threatened by Santa Claus?!”
“Observance of the Christian winter holiday has been forbidden,” the bear says, “as has any form of veneration of the gift-bearing Christian saint.”
“You’re burning their house down for watching a fucking Christmas movie?” It’s not until I see the shocked look from Abby and the others in the crowd that I realize I’m the one who just shouted this.
Then I notice their shocked looks shift, and when I follow their eyes, I see the bear is marching deliberately towards me. Its big rear paws stop less than a foot away, and I have to crane my neck to see its head and great slathering maw. “Do you question the power of the great spirits?” it demanded through a set of large sharp teeth.
“Shouldn’t I?” Up close and in person, I can definitely tell this animal spirit is no Pixar movie character. But something keeps me from shrinking away in abject terror and continuing. “Pete is right: why are you so scared of Santa Claus that you have to burn these people out of their home for watching…”
“Rudolph,” Tricia, the older McArdle child fills in for me. Her little brother, Michael, has his thumb jammed tight into his mouth to keep himself from crying.
“An animated special about a flying reindeer with a light-up nose who works for a fat man at the North Pole.” I actually hear myself laugh, and what’s more, I also hear a few scattered titters from the rest of the crowd. “If you can consider that to be such a threat to your power and authority, you’re hardly even worthy of being considered gods, are you?”
There’s a silence then that you can only hear on a winter’s night, when the snow seems to absorb every sound around you. The bear spirit stares directly at me with red-glowing eyes. Somehow, I stare back without flinching.
Then it raises its head and roars into the sky. I’m shocked backward on my heels, which slide out from under me on the icy pavement, and I drop hard on my tailbone. The roar coincides with a brilliant flash, and when I turn my head, I see the flames from the McArdles’ house jump impossibly high. An instant later, the fire has extinguished itself, as if a giant hand had crumpled a sheet of red-orange paper. When I’m able to blink the colored blobs from my vision and my eyes adjust to the suddenly dimmed light, the bear is gone, and nothing is left of the McArdle house but the scorched concrete and cinderblocks of the basement.
“Oh my God, Dad…!”
“You all right, Dave…?”
“Anderson, you crazy son of a…”
“…bravest thing I’ve ever seen…”
I must be in a slight daze, because the next thing I know, I’m back inside, laying on the couch, with my boots off and a blanket thrown over me. Abby is seated beside me, squeezing my hand tight, with Pete standing over her shoulder. “Hey, pal, you doing okay, now?” he asks. Even after losing everything he owns, he’s the first one to offer his help to a friend in need.
“Yeah. Fine,” I say, sitting up. “My ass’ll probably be black and blue tomorrow, but besides that…”
Pete shakes his head at me. “I thought for sure that thing was going to rip your head off!” he tells me. “What in the world got into you?”
I have no answer for him. But Abby beams at me, and tells Pete, with undisguised pride, “My dad is just a very bold man.”
I ask the McArdles to stay for the night, and after repeatedly telling me they don’t want to be a bother, and insisting it will only be for one night, they accept. We order a pizza, which goes a long way towards getting the kids’ spirits back up. After dinner, Abby takes the younger ones out to the other room to play video games while the adults have coffee in the kitchen. In contrast to their children, Pete and Kay have grown more morose as the evening’s worn on, and the reality of their situation has had a chance to sink in. “God,” Pete mutters to himself, head in his hands, staring into his half-empty mug. “What have I done?”
“You can’t blame yourself, Pete,” Kay tells him. “You were just trying to give the kids some little bit of a normal Christmas…”
“I should have known better.” Pete looks up at me and explains, “The kids have been so disappointed that they aren’t running any of the old classic specials on TV this year. And a friend of mine, he had this old VHS he’d saved from years ago when he taped them off the TV.” Then he surprises us by laughing. “And we thought the movie studios were tough on illegal video pirates, right?”
Kay and I also laugh at this bit of dark humor, but the moment of amusement is short-lived. “I keep praying that this all turns out like one of those shows,” Kay says. “That, maybe, Jiibayaabooz’s heart will grow three sizes and Christmas will be saved in the end.”
“Or,” I say, “maybe we won’t have to deal with Jiibayaabooz for a lot longer.”
Pete’s head jerks up. “What do you mean?” he asks.
Now it’s my turn to hesitate. Both Pete and Kay are both very religious—not in an in-your-face kind of way, but their church and the charity work they did was always a very central part of their lives. That old church had been ripped apart stone by stone by a powerful, highly localized whirlwind earlier this summer, the same fate that had befallen every other house of worship in the Twin Cities, most spectacularly the Cathedral of Saint Paul across the river, in the city now called East Minneapolis. I’m fairly certain that they’ll have an even stronger reaction to hearing about my little tête-à-tête with Iris than Tori did.
But I tell them anyhow, though I play down the whole “greatly rewarded” part. To my surprise, rather than being shocked or alarmed, they actually seem excited.
“What, you don’t see what this means?” Pete asks when I express my confusion. “There’s a civil war brewing amongst these different groups of immortals. We’ve been seeing glimpses of it for months over in Europe, with all the immigration from America and old borders starting to break down. Now, finally, it’s all coming to a head!”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Well, no, not a good thing,” Pete allows. “But…it’s what we’ve known is coming. What God has willed.”
I look from one glowing face to the other. “Shit,” I whisper. “You’re talking about Armageddon…and you’re looking forward to it!”
“David, understand,” Kay says. “The Battle of Armageddon doesn’t mean nuclear annihilation or human extinction. It means God’s final triumph over the forces of evil.”
“We know you’re not a believer,” Pete says in a slightly condescending tone that I’d always admired him for never using when talking about his religion. “But look at what Revelation says: ‘Satan will be released from his prison, and will go out to deceive the nations of the four corners of the world, to gather them for battle. And they surrounded the camp of God’s people, the beloved city.’ That’s pretty clearly what we’ve seen since Olympic Day, and with the siege of the Vatican.”
“You’re not Catholic,” I say.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re all Christians, and Vatican City is our last stronghold.”
Kay then says, “But the prophecy goes on to say, ‘And fire came down from God and devoured them, and the one who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.’“
Pete nods with an almost frightening fervor. “This is it, I know it now. This is the time of the Savior’s return.” And then he smiles at me. “This will be our Christmas miracle.”
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine at all.
It’s Thursday night, December the 20th. If the Mayans were right, the world ends at 11:11 tomorrow morning. If Pete and Kay are right, Jesus will make his return appearance on the anniversary of his first.
Like Pete said, I’m not a believer. The last time I set foot inside a church was my wedding day, and given the way that turned out, I’d never been in any hurry to go back. And normally, the demented scribbling of some first-century madman about seven-headed, ten-horned beasts holds no more truck with me than the work of Stone Age astronomers does. But it was kind of hard not to see the correlations with the world around us.
The news from the Vatican is getting more and more confusing. The networks announced the Pope’s death at least three times in the week that followed the fire at the McArdles’, only to retract those reports each time. The BBC World Service reported that the Catholic cardinals arrested in Rome had been sacrificed into the mouth of Mount Vesuvius, an accusation the Italian deiocracy vehemently denied. Curly Hair appeared daily on CNN, first condemning the Olympians for their inhumanity, then the Celt-run Beeb for running baseless rumors, all while maintaining his unwavering contempt for the Church. And through all this, more and more videos have appeared online of the Pope issuing messages of encouragement and hope in multiple languages (including Latin, probably as a deliberate poke in the eye to the Roman gods). Every time they tried to stamp out one video-hosting site, two more would pop up—like they were battling a digital Hydra, ironically enough.
But tonight, I try to force all other thoughts from my mind, and think of this simply as our traditional holiday celebration come four days early. Abby and I sit together at the foot of the secularly adorned evergreen and exchange our gifts. For her, a pair of boots which she had informed me weeks earlier were the most awesome boots ever. They were horribly overpriced, and not at all practical for the Minnesota winter, but this year I found I didn’t care so much about such things. For me, she picked a very lovely silver and turquoise tie tack, in the shape of a four-pointed star. “It’s the morning star,” she tells me, “a symbol of courageous spirit.” I thank her and hug her, and we spend the next few minutes sitting there watching the lights on the tree blink. Without carols to sing as we do so, though, the illusion of normality falls apart.
“What do you think is going to happen tomorrow?” She asks this in the small, scared voice that, once upon a time, I’d heard asking me to check for monsters in the closet.
I wanted to tell her now again that no, there was nothing in the closet, nothing would come to get her in the dark while she slept. “I don’t know,” I tell her instead.
“What if something does happen…?”
“What if we knew a year ago that the whole world was going to change during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games? What would knowing that, and worrying about it ahead of time, have changed?” I give her what I hope is an encouraging smile. “Whatever happens—if anything happens—we’ll just find a way to deal with it, just like we did with this.”
She nods, but I can tell she’s far from satisfied. I reach over and rub my hand in small circles between her shoulder blades. “Okay?” I ask.
That’s when the tears start rolling. She throws both arms around me and sobs into my shoulder, “I love you, Dad. If anything does happen, and I don’t get a chance to say it then…”
She trails off, and I feel my eyes getting hot, too. “I love you too, Abs,” I whisper, and squeeze with as much force as I dare use. We sit embracing like that for I don’t know how long, until her sobs finally subside, and then a while longer. The tree lights continue to blink silently above us.
Then she lifts her face and whispers, “I need to call Mom.” I nod, and reluctantly release her. She heads to the back of the house and I stay there on the floor, staring out the windows into the night. I repeat to myself that it does no good to worry about things that are out of our control…yet continue to do so.
All night, CNN runs a perverse little countdown clock in the lower left-hand corner of their screen showing the time to the second until 11:11 A.M. GMT, when the sun reaches its lowest point in the winter sky. Without actually making a decision to do so, Abby and I spend the night sitting up together. We both camp out on the couch, occasionally nodding off for maybe ten or fifteen minutes at a time, while the overnight anchors report on the various Winter Solstice Celebrations taking place across the Eastern Hemisphere.
Just after four o’clock local time, the tone of the programming shifts, and the anchors spend the next hour breathlessly speculating what will happen when the solstice sun reaches the galactic equator. An insert box on the screen shows a camera shot from the grounds of the Royal Observatory in London, focused on the mid-morning sun, as if they expect it to suddenly jump down and start dancing a jig on the horizon. Who knows, maybe I dozed through the point where they did predict it would do just that. It wouldn’t be any more unbelievable than anything else.
Finally, the countdown clock clicks to zero.
The sun stays just where it is, as if it were just any other day.
After what sounds like a collective sigh of relief from the television, the anchor team begins to laugh and joke, and expresses amusement that anyone could have made such a big deal over a simple astronomical event.
Then the screen bursts into static.
“What is it?” Abby asks as I grab the remote and scan through the other channels, and only find more of the same.
“Could just be the cable,” I say, even though neither of us believes that. “Or maybe sunspots.”
Abby jumps up, runs to her bedroom, and comes back with her smartphone. “Twitter is still up,” she tells me as her fingers play expertly over the small screen. “They’re saying all the TV went out in Los Angeles, too.”
I briefly wonder which of the celebrities she follows is up at this hour watching TV and Tweeting, then push that question aside. “Can you get on any of the news sites?”
She manipulates the touchscreen for several minutes, scowling, until she finds something that works. “Here’s NYTimes.com…no big breaking news headlines though…”
Maybe it is something as simple as sunspots, then, interfering with satellite transmission. Or even simpler, an odd coincidence. For the first time in at least twenty-four hours, I feel as if I could almost relax.
And then the static on the television clears, and is filled with the image of a man-sized Raven. “Peoples of America: be it known that the great Odin, ruler of Asgard, has laid claim to your lands. You shall from this day forward worship only the gods of Valhalla. As for those weak spirits who have previously claimed this continent, they too will be made to bend down on their knees and—” The screen returns to static once again.
“Oh, holy shit,” I mutter.
The civil war has begun.
Thick black clouds fill the sky well before the sun rises over America, turning the shortest day of the year into an unending night. The darkness is only broken by near continuous bolts of lightning firing back and forth across the sky. Gale force winds shake the walls, and fist-sized hailstones, followed by frogs, pound the roof. Abby and I spend the majority of the day huddled down in our semi-finished basement. The one time I dare to look out the front windows while running up and down stairs, I witness a Cerberus chasing after a police car. The city cops all had to swear oaths to the Native gods in order to keep their jobs; I don’t want to think what will happen to the poor bastards once the hellhound inevitably catches them.
Once I get our old analog set plugged back in and hooked back to the cable, we get to watch control of the media change hands more than a dozen times over the course of the morning. The couple of times the Native gods regain the upper hand, Curly Hair acts as their spokesman, and each time, his calm and polished demeanor slips further. “Our kind has shown exceptional generosity and restraint in the days since our return,” he rages in his latest on-air address. “We have been forgiving of those who came to this land and slaughtered our original worshippers; all we have asked is that you now pay us the obeisance they once did. This benevolence ends now!”
At another point, for just a few seconds, we see an actual human woman appear on camera. The video quality makes me think she is using a cheap webcam, and the audio is even worse. “My brothers and sisters in Christ, you must stay—” is what I think I hear her say, before she is cut off.
Amazingly, the internet is still up and running, though it’s slowed down to the point where it seems as if we’re using dial-up service again. There’s no more streaming video, and any kind of graphics take a painfully long time to load, but we’re at least getting information. How much of it is accurate, though, and what it all adds up to, is hard to say.
At some point in the mid-afternoon, we lose power, and the basement turns pitch black. But only for a moment, before a brilliant light fills the space, at the center of which is Iris. “Greetings from the gods of Olympus.”
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” I tell her.
“Gods do not take oaths and promises lightly.”
Abby jumps up from her seat. “What the hell is happening? What are you people doing?”
“The celestial alignment has opened wide the door which allowed our return five moons ago,” the goddess explains. “Our power has now reached its zenith, and soon all the pretenders to godhood shall be vanquished. The time is here, and I will have your answer now, David Anderson. Will you swear your devotion to us?”
So here it is. I stand up from the old futon we’d been sitting on, walk up directly in front of Iris, and say, “What happens if I do…and you lose?”
“We will not,” she decrees. “We have conquered their kind before, in the days of Alexander and Caesar, and we shall do so again.”
I shake my head. “This has been going on all day, this war of yours. Whatever door opened for you, it seems like it’s opened for all of you immortals. You’re all evenly matched.”
“Our victory is certain,” Iris insists. But somehow, I sense that the divine confidence she exudes is a bit forced.
“Really?” I reply, and then ask her, “What’s going on in New York?”
“Why are you concerned with that city above your own?” God or no, I have no trouble telling that I just struck a very raw nerve.
“Because I noticed something a while back,” I tell her. “All those viral videos from out of the Vatican? All of them go back to IP addresses located in New York City. And now this morning. Before CNN first went off the air, they were broadcasting from Atlanta. Since then, they’ve been airing exclusively out of their New York studio. Same with all the other networks, and the BBC. Nothing from Washington or London or anywhere else. The whole world is under assault, but New York is like this relative calm in the eye of the storm. Almost like you’re powerless to do anything there.”
“This one city is of no import!” she says, protesting too much. “We will not be defeated. In this, you must have faith!”
“‘Faith,’ my ass,” I shout back. “‘Faith’ is believing in a thing there’s no good reason to believe in. If your victory is certain, then what does faith have to do with it?”
“A great deal more than you can ever realize.” Her anger at being challenged is gone now, replaced by a deeply haunted expression. After a moment, she continues in a more desperate sounding tone. “David Anderson, we have not made this offer to you lightly. We know your potential. The gods need men like you to help them rule other men.” Then, having pained herself enough with this pleading of a mortal, she pulls herself up higher, so that her head is touching the floor joists overhead, and wields her staff at me like a sword. “This war will be over soon, and your future depends on the choice you make now. Will you swear your faith to the gods of Olympus?”
I look over to where Abby is still sitting, wide eyed and breath held, then turn back to Iris. “I will swear my allegiance and my loyalty. I cannot promise my faith.”
Iris takes a second to consider. “That is acceptable.”
“Under one condition,” I add.
“Do not test me, mortal…” Iris warns me, scowling.
But I stand firm and say, “I want my daughter safe with her mother in New York before I do anything for you.”
“What?!” Abby jumps up from the futon and puts herself between Iris and me. “Dad, no!!”
The betrayal in her eyes kills me, but I know this needs to be done. “Abby, you understand the danger I’m putting myself in here, and the danger I’d be putting you in.”
“Yes, I understand! But…”
“No buts,” I say, cutting off her protest. “Once the dust settles and things are back to…well, ‘normal’ would be optimistic, I guess…but when things are calmed down, we’ll bring you back.” I look back to Iris. “Do we have a deal?”
Iris nods and says, “I will see to the girl’s safe passage. Give me your vow.”
“I swear myself to Zeus and the gods of Olympus.”
And with that, both Iris and my daughter disappear in another brilliant flash of light.
I let out a hard, shuddering breath and collapse back onto the futon. “Oh, Christ,” I mutter, then correct myself: “Oh, Zeus.” It’s not exactly what they wanted of me, but I’m going to need to put some faith in these immortal sons of bitches, after all.
Three days later, word comes from the Vatican that Pope Benedict has abdicated. He is still alive, but given his failing health and the threat to the Christian faith, he has decided “after many hard days of prayer” that he needed to step aside for a younger, stronger leader. The new pontiff, Pope Boniface X, is expected to make his first public appearance sometime tomorrow morning. My new bosses try to spin this into a victory, since the Church is essentially giving up hope on the Second Coming. It’s far easier to win adherents for gods who walk the earth along with us, they say, than one who remains unknown.
I’m not sure how true this is, though. Like the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve become way too familiar with gods of late. I am one of the few mortals who has been made privy to the frustration the Olympians are feeling, not only because of their continued inability to breach the Papal Compound, but also the stalemate that has developed in their civil war, particularly in the battle for Manhattan. They seem utterly perplexed by whatever has made them so ineffectual within the boundaries of the city, but I for one could not be happier. Abby has refused to speak to me since I’ve sent her there, but having her pissed at me is a small price to pay for having her safe.
But I need to push these blasphemous thoughts aside for now. Like it or not, these are my gods now, and I need to do my utmost in my service to them.
The Mall of America is mobbed tonight, with crowds not seen since last Christmastime, all of them squeezed into the Main Rotunda area. I am positioned far above, standing on the platform atop the towering video screen, my own image being projected three stories high. I look down at the mob of the un-Called, former non-believers like me who, before the start of the Solstice War, thought they could go on with their everyday lives while paying only passing attention to the world that had changed. And now that they couldn’t, they needed someone to tell them what to do, and how to find favor with the gods.
They need me, the new High Priest of Zeus.
Gods help us all.
I take a deep breath, and smooth down my tie, my fingers brushing against the silver-and-turquoise star tie tack hidden under the jacket flaps. Then I put my hands up, and words come out of my mouth:
“Greetings from the gods of Olympus!”
I have no memory of what else I said, only that the crowd had cheered and chanted, and in the end had declared as a mass their full-throated devotion to Zeus and his pantheon. The bosses are pleased, even though a similar rally held by the Asgardians at Target Center had drawn more of the region’s Scandinavian and Germanic population. There are other similar rallies taking place all over the country, the gods building their number of worshippers, drawing their strength from them. There will be a new offensive before 2012 is out, and not even the gods know how that will turn out in the end.
It’s past midnight now, and the mall is empty once again. As I walk alone through its wide echoing corridors, I notice in the dim light that all the Solstice decorations have already been torn down. The traditional days-long celebration had been cut short, so as not to invite the connection with Christmas. The twenty-fifth comes without ribbons, tags, boxes or bags, and will go the same way.
I sigh as I step out into the silent night. Turns out there is no Santa Claus, after all.
There Be In Dreams No War
by Phil Giunta
by Phil Giunta
Ireland
2250 B.C.
The people of the Tuatha de Danann had been divided by their Fomorian oppressors. The cliff top overlooking the western shore was their last stronghold. Others had scattered to the east, leaving this particular group sorely outnumbered.
Far below, aboard the Wave Sweeper, Manannan fixed his gaze on the three hundred foot sandstone wall that met the water just ahead. As he willed his ship to a full stop, the god of the sea turned toward the stern and raised his silver spear. Four smaller boats, each carrying twenty armed men, fell in line with Manannan’s vessel and dropped anchors of rock.
Of course, the Wave Sweeper no more required an anchor than she did sails or oars. The vessel moved and stopped at the whim of her master.
The sounds of shuffling and knocking on the deck drew Manannan’s attention. He made his way forward and reached out to the armored horse, running his hand along its side and neck to soothe its restlessness. Enbarr of the Flowing Mane bowed his head as Manannan began inspecting his armor.
“It will be a brutal day, my friend. The odds are not in our favor, but where the Fomorians are savage, we are clever. Though I am not so certain the Dagda will take my advice seriously.”
Manannan levitated off the deck and lowered himself gracefully onto Enbarr’s saddle. “But we shall see. Onward!”
Enbarr reared up on his hind legs and leapt from the ship, carrying Manannan atop the waves on a full gallop to the thin shoreline. From the clearing high above, several of the Dagda’s men shouted and cheered.
Manannan raised his spear. “Make way!”
The throng parted as eighty men carrying clubs, swords, and axes floated skyward, led by a sea god and his horse.
“Father, the Fomorians are nearly upon us. We are outnumbered. I suggest we withdraw.”
The Dagda, all-father and king of the Tuatha de Danann, hefted his club and pointed it toward the sea. His bass voice shook the trees. “Withdraw to where, Cermait? There is naught but water to our backs and I would see it turn crimson with our blood before letting the ogres take this land.”
“I fear both may happen within the hour, Father.”
“I would thank you to keep your blood where it belongs and out of my ocean.”
The Dagda turned just as Manannan leapt from his horse. “A most timely arrival, sea god.” The king’s dark gray beard and hair were matted in sweat and dried blood, as was his cloak. His club, able to slay a dozen Fomorians in one blow, was nearly as long as Manannan’s spear and thick as an oak tree.
Manannan bowed his head and gazed up at the Dagda, the tallest and most imposing of all the de Danann people. “I bring eighty men with me, but we—”
“The Fomorians are in sight!” All heads turned toward a middle aged man in a cloak and bronze breastplate running toward them from the opposite side of the clearing.
“How many?” The Dagda asked.
“Nearly six hundred, my lord. They are in the forest now.”
Cermait turned to Manannan. “Even with your men, we remain severely outnumbered.”
Manannan ignored him. “As I was about to say, my lord, the rest of our people are in battle with the Fomorians at Magh Tuiredh. They are led by Lugh.”
“Lugh! I do not trust him. He’s part Fomorian.”
“He has slain Balor,” Manannan noted.
“His own grandfather? King of the Fomorians?”
“Their queen, Cethlenn, now commands his forces,” Manannan said. “Our men are needed there as is your leadership. My boats stand ready.”
“It will take time to gather everyone,” Cermait said. “Many are wounded and the Fomorians will be upon us in moments. Some will need to sacrifice themselves to permit our escape. I volunteer, Father.”
Manannan held up a hand. “Might I make a suggestion?”
The Dagda nodded. “Go on.”
“Play the Uaithne.”
Cermait stepped forward, brow furrowed. “You wish our king to play a harp in the middle of a bloodbath?”
The Dadga put a hand on his son’s shoulder and the boy fell silent. As the king’s youngest, Cermait seemed compelled to overcompensate for his slight stature and effeminate appearance. A head of strawberry curls and a maiden’s waistline do not a fearsome warrior make.
“On the contrary, I hope to prevent one. Sire, you of all people know the power of the Uaithne. Its song can inspire joy where none exists, plunge the most jovial into the depths of sorrow—”
“—or put the most alert minded into a state of deep sleep.” The Dagda’s face brightened.
“Exactly, my lord, but only you and your harper can play the Uaithne. It will sing for no other and your harper is at Magh Tuiredh.”
“It is the sworn duty of a king to protect his people. Cermait, fetch the Uaithne. I will meet the monsters in the clearing, alone. As for you, Manannan, you’re quite clever for a ruler of fish.”
A grin lit the sea god’s face. “Well, you know what they say, sire. Fish is brain food.”
Twenty minutes later, the Fomorians reached the edge of the tree line, sweat glistening on their otherwise dull gray skin. They started forward, weapons at the ready. Abruptly, they halted and stared in confusion.
Seated on a rock in the center of the clearing, the Dagda plucked and strummed his harp of oak and gold. Its song was slow and soothing. The trees swayed to the melody. All the while, the king’s stomach lurched with a fear he would never admit to.
Finally, the Fomorians overcame their disbelief. Blades and blunt weapons were raised above hairless heads that shrieked a horrific battle cry. They charged forward—
—and toppled to the ground unconscious.
The Dagda exhaled and reached behind the rock to retrieve his club. He tucked it under his massive arm and resumed the song of slumber as he made his way out of the clearing. One of the Fomorians stirred as the Dagda stepped over him.
He smashed its skull with his club.
Fragarach never missed its mark. At Magh Turiedh, Manannan’s famous sword slashed, decapitated, and eviscerated one Fomorian after another. Across the battlefield to his left, Lugh plowed through a contingent with a sweep of his enormous axe. To the right, the Dagda’s brother Ogma wielded two swords, one formerly the property of Balor.
The Tuatha de Danann were no longer outnumbered.
As he gutted what was probably his hundredth Fomorian, Manannan gazed up at the top of a nearby hill. The Dagda swung his club to the left, felling ten ogres. Bringing the club around to the right, a dozen more were sent tumbling down the steep rocky slope.
He is in his glory, Manannan thought. No harp’s magic will be needed this day.
His wry smile faded as a cloaked figure coalesced out of thin air behind the Dagda. The figure twisted in mid-air and thrust a dagger into the back of his neck. Its blade pierced straight though. Blood sprayed from the king’s throat.
With a howl of rage, Manannan threw his silver spear but the figure vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The spear continued through the air, impaling two Fomorian soldiers as they descended on the fallen king.
Manannan leapt the impossible distance, landing atop the hill beside the Dagda’s supine form. There were no Fomorians in sight now. Blood spurted from the Dagda’s throat with every breath.
Reaching beneath his armor, Manannan tore a strip of cloth from his cloak. “Forgive me, my lord.” Gently, he turned the Dagda’s head to the side and yanked the dagger. Swiftly, he wrapped the cloth around the king’s neck.
“They are retreating!”
“The Fomorians are retreating!”
“We are victorious!”
Manannan ignored the cheers and shouts from below. His king was dying.
The Dagda reached up and pulled Manannan close. He whispered one word before passing out.
Cethlenn.
The Dagda survived the six-day journey east to Brú na Boinne where the Tuatha de Danann had settled years before. All the while, three physicians tended to the king, attempting to stop the persistent bleeding, administering medicines and otherwise fretting. Cermait remained at his father’s side during the journey.
Reaching out with his mind, Manannan had sent word to Ogma and Bodb Derg, the Dagda’s eldest son. After the battle, they had pursued the remaining few Fomorians to the coast to cast them out of the land.
By nightfall, the king had developed a fever. His breath came in shallow gasps. The physicians feared that the dagger’s blade might have been coated in poison but they could not determine its nature.
“Cermait, where is the Uaithne?” Manannan asked in a hushed tone.
“With the harper in his tent.”
“Why don’t you bring him here? Have him play softly to soothe your father.”
Wordlessly, Cermait left the tent. A moment later, there was shouting from across the camp. Manannan pointed to the physicians. “Remain with the king.”
He hurried over to a mob surrounding a small tent. “Report.”
Inside, Cermait stood over the body of the harper. Blood seeped down his chest from a wound in the center of his throat. He was a mere boy, perhaps a year older than Cermait. His eyes and mouth were opened wide. Manannan reached for a nearby blanket of cowhide and draped it over the body.
“No Fomorian has set foot in this camp.”
“None that you saw,” Manannan growled.
The following morning, the Dagda was buried beside a massive oak tree, the grave marked with his club and surrounded by white stones. The Tuatha de Danann sang an ancient song of brave warriors, bloody battles, and the triumph of gods.
But there was no music.
Under a crescent moon and a canopy of stars, the Dagda waited aboard Wave Sweeper. At the bow, Manannan leapt from his horse and paused before making his way astern. There, two gods stared at the sea in silence.
“I never thought I would see this day,” Manannan said finally.
“Nor did I.” The Dagda smiled. “I had hoped to outlive all of you. We have won the war and our people are safe, though I fear their trials are not over. Still, I am prepared to go home.”
Escorting the spirits of kings to the otherworld was a task for which Manannan had volunteered centuries before. He had never regretted it.
Until now.
“You are the greatest king our people have ever known,” Manannan solemnly informed his former liege. “It was an honor to fight by your side. Be assured, sire, I will avenge you if it takes all eternity.”
The Dagda nodded. “I will listen for the song of the Uaithne. Perhaps one day, it will bring me back to this land.”
Manannan said no more as Wave Sweeper turned toward the open sea and sailed into the night.
Cethlenn plucked at the gold strings of the Uaithne, ran her dagger across them, slammed the harp against the side of her boat. Aside from the thud of wood against wood, it made no other sound.
“Useless,” she seethed.
“What are your orders, your highness?”
Cethlenn whirled on her personal guard. “You will keep rowing!”
She stood the harp on the edge of the boat. “As for this thing…” The queen plunged her dagger between the strings, slashing every one of them. Satisfied, she tossed it overboard and watched until it disappeared into the cold darkness.
“…it will never be played again.”
Irish Sea
2018 A.D.
Aboard the Daly Treasure, Captain Sean Daly watched the monitor with mild fascination. Five hundred feet below the surface of the Irish Sea, his daughter and her future husband had recovered a baffling artifact.
“Almost there, dad.”
Sean removed his headset, ruffling his thinning gray hair. He limped out onto the open deck, wincing at the pain in his right knee. Were it not for the bullet wound that had caused his discharge two decades ago, he might still be serving in the Navy. But then, I’d be working for demons now. It was the knee that forced him to keep his weight in check. That and his love of diving. At fifty-one, Sean enjoyed looking trim in a wet suit.
The Ladybird broke the surface to port. After a moment, the bubble hatch atop the submersible flipped open and Meghan Daly stood up. She stretched toned, freckled arms over a head of saffron hair before pointing to the object clutched in the claws of the robotic arm, “Check that out.”
“Hold on.” Sean retrieved a pike pole from the deck and leaned over the edge of the boat. “Bring it here.”
Sitting beside Meghan, Connor Maguire rotated the robotic arm, bringing the open triangle of wood and gold closer to the boat.
Sean threaded the pole through the artifact. “OK, got it. Let it go.” The claw opened and Sean pulled it in. “Has some weight to it.”
“It’s a medieval style harp, isn’t it?” Meghan asked.
He lowered it gently to the deck. “Certainly seems like it.”
“Wonder how old it is?”
“Hard to say. It’s in fairly good shape—minus the strings, of course. Could be a fairly new reproduction. We should get it inside and—”
“Dad!”
Sean looked up to see Meghan pointing to starboard.
Closing rapidly, a silver superyacht glided across the water in absolute silence. Sean estimated it at one hundred and fifty feet long, just over twice the size of his own boat. Its bow came to a sharp narrow point. Two pylons extended from either side amidships and curved downward, ending in long struts. It resembled a sleek spacecraft more than a seagoing vessel.
The most striking aspect, however, was the man standing motionless on the bow. He was tall and thin with a long dark coat. In one hand, he held a spear that glinted in the morning sun and his eyes were fixed on the Daly Treasure.
Sean grabbed two mooring lines and tossed them to Meghan and Connor. “Tie her off and get aboard, quickly!”
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
“Just do it!”
Less than a minute later, Meghan and Connor were climbing aboard when the yacht came to a stop about sixty feet away. The man’s hair and trimmed beard were auburn and he was dressed completely in black. He raised his silver spear in greeting before leaping from the bow. Meghan gasped as the man landed with ease atop the water and strolled over to the Daly Treasure.
With an affable smile, the man bowed his head. “Captain Sean Daly, I presume.”
“That’s right.”
“Permission to come aboard?”
Sean knew the request was a mere courtesy. This man—no, this being—was one of the ‘gods’. Do I have a choice?
“Uh, permission granted.”
With that, the man levitated off the water and touched down gracefully on the deck.
“Forgive my intrusion, explorers. My name is Manny and I believe you have just found something that belongs to my people.”
“And what would that be?”
“The Uaithne.”
“The what?” Connor asked.
“The harp,” Sean replied, never averting his gaze. So maybe it’s a relic after all. Manny, Manny…there’s something familiar about him. “Everything we find must be brought back to the government of Southern Ireland for inspection. We’re not thieves, sir.”
Manny spread his arms wide, his smile brightening. “I accuse no one, children. You live under Fomorian rule and are thus indentured servants. Give to Ireland what is Ireland’s. Give to the Tuatha de Danann what is ours.”
“The Fomos won’t see it that way,” Connor said.
“The Fomorians were the ones who discarded the instrument ages ago,” Manny said. “Those animals wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“How would you know?”
“Connor!” Sean snapped. The boy was well built and always ready for a fight, a combination that sometimes gave his mouth more liberty than it should have. In other words, a typical Irishman.
“Let’s just say I’ve been around for a very long time,” Manny replied.
“Oh my God,” Sean blurted as realization struck. “You’re Manannan.”
Manny pointed at Sean. “You’re very perceptive but Manny has a more modern sound. Don’t you think?”
Silent up to this point, Meghan moved beside her father. “Who is this?”
“Manannan mac Lir. He was the god of the Isle of Man and of the sea,” Sean explained.
Meghan and Connor looked from Sean to Manny. Almost in unison, they took a step back.
“And I am again, that’s the beauty of it,” Manny winked. “Though I dare say I treat the Manx people far better than Cethlenn treats you. Now, I would love to stay and regale you with exhilarating tales of yore but I must be off. The harp, if you please. It would be most unpleasant if I had to take it by force.”
“If the Fomos find out we turned it over to you, they’ll kill us.”
Manny extended a hand. “Then come with me. Live free in my kingdom with open access to the internet, television, telecommunications, unrestricted travel. The Tuatha de Danann are beneficent gods. You should see the parties we throw.”
“Uh, give us a moment, please.” Sean ushered the others into the cabin. “I know a bit about this man and his kind. If this harp is what I think it is, it supposedly belonged to one of their kings and has magical powers.”
“Are you turning it over to him?” Connor asked, running a hand through his walnut brown hair.
“You heard his offer.”
Meghan’s hazel eyes widened. “Dad, you can’t be serious. Leave with him? You don’t really believe he’s a god.”
“There is only one God for me, you know that, but the Fomos have taken everything from the people since all of these so-called gods returned six years ago. It kills me to abandon my home but I don’t want to see my grandchildren raised in the realm of monsters who cull the human population for food! Think about it, we’re the only family we have. Connor’s is scattered around the globe. None of us have any real attachments in the south anymore. If your mother were still alive today, she’d agree with me. This is our chance!”
Meghan and Connor looked at one another. She reached for his hand. He took it without hesitation.
“That’s the spirit,” Manannan called.
“Aren’t you also the god that escorted the dead to the afterlife?” Sean asked.
“That was one of the many services I provided, but fear not, my children. I’m saving that for one who is far more deserving.”
It was the largest castle Sean had ever visited. Large, perhaps, but not old. Until now, there had never been a castle in Port Erin, let alone a seventy thousand square meter fortress. While it was constructed in ancient style, complete with battlements around the roof, the ashlar veneer was not at all weathered and the electronic surveillance blended in as if planned rather than retrofitted.
“It even has central air,” Manannan was saying. “The marvels your people have created!”
“This is amazing,” Connor said. “What do you call this place?”
“Castle Dagda.”
“How long did it take to build?” Meghan asked.
“Oh, it’s still under construction, but we were able to move in after the first year.”
“Where did you stay before that?” Connor wondered aloud.
Manannan grinned. “Bay Hotel. Lovely place.”
Just then, a large white bird with feathers of silver and blue swooped over them and landed on the path ahead. After a moment, it began to grow and contort until it transformed into the most gorgeous woman Sean had ever set eyes on. She was barefoot, in form fitting jeans and a shimmering silver blouse. She stood a head shorter than Manannan.
“You found the Dagda’s harp?” she asked in a soft voice.
Perhaps it was her long wavy hair of sky blue that matched her eyes, or the curves of her perfect figure, or her smooth, unblemished skin. Now that I could worship.
“Actually, my love, the credit goes to these intrepid explorers.” Manannan introduced the divers to his wife, Fand. “I merely convinced them that we needed it more than the Fomorians.”
Fand held out her hand. Sean took it and gently kissed her knuckles. “You truly are a goddess of the sea.”
She graced him with a breathtakingly sweet smile. “Well, aren’t you the flatterer?”
Meghan and Connor merely bowed their heads nervously. Fand returned a smile before glancing at the harp. “It is in rather pathetic condition.”
Manannan ran his fingers along the ancient engravings in the harp’s body. “I shall have it restored by the finest craftsman on the island.”
“Even still, you must find someone to play it. You must still locate the Uaithne.”
“Pardon me, ma’am, but I thought we did,” Sean said.
“You have found the instrument,” she explained, “yet all instruments require a player. Without one, the other is useless. Yet only two can play this harp. When the Dagda was unavailable to do so, he appointed another whose talents were equal to his own. The young man and the harp were as one, both called Uaithne.”
“Some say the Uaithne’s talents surpassed that of the king,” Manannan added. “But such remarks were usually uttered in hushed tones. The Dagda carried a big stick.”
“Where is the Dagda?”
Sorrow clouded the sea god’s face. “Dead, I’m afraid. He died from a wound inflicted by Cethlenn many centuries ago. The saddest day of my life was escorting the Dagda to the otherworld. I swore that I would avenge him. With your help, children, I am one step closer.”
“With a harp?”
“The Uaithne’s music can inspire joy, inflict sorrow, or send its listeners into a state of deep sleep,” Fand explained. “But as I said, it will sing only for the Dagda or Uaithne.”
Her mate brightened. “And thanks to your remarkable internet, my children, I may have found her.”
“Oh, Manannan. Uaithne was a young man. Don’t you remember?”
“At one time perhaps, but I believe he has been reincarnated as a young woman, an extremely gifted musician with golden hair and eyes of violet. She does not merely play the harp, she makes love to it like no other I’ve witnessed since ages past.”
Fand crossed her arms. “And just how did you discover this woman?”
Manannan laughed. “YouTube.”
A stocky young man approached, dressed in Manx military uniform. He stopped before god and goddess and bowed deeply. “We have received a call from Ogma, my lord. He wishes to speak with you.”
“Very well, I’ll take it in the war room. Thank you, lieutenant.” Manannan turned to his guests. “Fand will show you to your temporary living quarters. You are guests here at the castle and she loves giving tours.” With that, the god of the sea hurried off.
JSmith
Banned
http://www.amazon.com/Eyeball-Final-Failure-ebook/dp/B009UPQO38/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370538019&sr=1-1&keywords=final+failure+eyeball+to+eyeballhttp://www.amazon.com/Eyeball-Final-Failure-ebook/dp/B009UPQO38/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370538019&sr=1-1&keywords=final+failure+eyeball+to+eyeball
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Contents
Prologue: P-Hour
One: Operation Anadyr
Two: Mission 3101
Three: ExComm
Four: Countdown to Quarantine
Five: DEFCON 2
Six: Foxtrot B-59
Pre-Crisis Timeline
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Selected Bibliography
About the Author
“Now the question really is what action we take which lessens the chance of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure.”
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
ExComm Meeting, 18 October 1962
White House, Washington D.C.
Final Failure is a five-book story of alternate history, set during a fictional Cuban Nuclear War of 1962. Some of the characters are actual historical figures, while others are the creations of the author. In each case, the narrative follows the conventions of historical fiction with regard to accurate portrayal of events…until a fictional incident on October 27, 1962, becomes the point of departure into alternate history.
In other words, this is a true tale of What Might Have Been.
For additional details, and updates regarding upcoming books in the Final Failure series, please visit douglasniles.com or facebook.com/AuthorDouglasNiles.
To Michael S. Dobson,
In sincere remembrance of all the history, both actual and “alternate,” we’ve shared over the years
Prologue: P-Hour
“Let every nation know…that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961
22 October 1962
1852 hours EST (Monday Evening)
Oval Office, The White House
Washington D.C.
The Oval Office had been transformed into a reasonable approximation of a television studio. Sound and power cables snaked across the floor, which had been covered with a tarpaulin to protect the carpet. The massive wooden desk, constructed from timbers once part of the warship HMS Resolute, was now draped in black felt, with a backdrop of similar material, decorated only by the Presidential flag, hanging behind. Furniture was shunted aside to make room for multiple microphones, two cameras, recording equipment, and large banks of lights.
Now that all was ready, the technicians and publicity people withdrew. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and the President’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, were the only people in the Oval Office as the President entered from the side door, walking stiffly as he approached his chair. With one hand propped on the corner of the desk, John Fitzgerald Kennedy limped to the seat and collapsed, wincing in pain.
His younger brother offered no reaction. Jack Kennedy’s back pain was a daily feature of his life, and the President resented any attempts at sympathy or what he described as coddling. Eventually, he would accept a shot or two of pain medication, but as the clock approached the moment that the administration had designated as P-Hour—7:00 PM on this crucial evening—such steroid and narcotic relief would have to wait.
The television cameras were already focused, hulking robots with glass eyes trained on the massive desk and the man sitting behind it. Bobby adjusted a pillow behind his brother’s back, helping him to sit straight in the chair.
“How’s that, Jack?” he asked. “Do you want another pillow? Should I move the chair back a bit?”
“No, it’s fine—thanks. Let’s get going,” the chief executive replied curtly.
Evelyn Lincoln reached a brush toward the President’s slightly mussed brown hair, but he waved her away and straightened it using his hand.
With a glance at the clock, JFK nodded his readiness.
“Better send them in,” he said.
Bobby went to the door and opened it, allowing Press Secretary Pierre Salinger to lead the cameramen and several sound and lighting technicians, all of them men dressed in suits, into the office. Each took up his station, the sound men kneeling before the black-draped platform as the bright lights came on one by one, washing the desk and its occupant in a bright arc of illumination. Bobby saw that Jack’s face was already composed, free of any evidence of pain. Instead, he looked stern, serious…Presidential.
With an eye on the clock, Salinger nodded at the President. “Alright, Sir. We’re on in ten seconds.” He paused, hand upraised, and counted down with his fingers.
“Three, two, one.”
John F. Kennedy stared squarely into the camera and began to speak, his familiar New England twang clipping each word with earnest intensity.
“Good evening, my fellow citizens.
“This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
“Upon receiving the first preliminary hard information of this nature last Tuesday morning at 9 A.M., I directed that our surveillance be stepped up. And having now confirmed and completed our evaluation of the evidence and our decision on a course of action, this government feels obliged to report this new crisis to you in fullest detail.”
1901 hours EST (Monday Evening)
Harry S. Truman Annex
Key West Naval Air Station
Key West, Florida
Commander Alex Widener stood on the tarmac just outside of the pilots’ ready room and watched the last of his F6A Skyrays, turbojet engine roaring as the afterburner spewed yellow flame, shoot down the runway. The powerful delta-wing fighter rose swiftly into the sunset shimmering over the Florida Strait.
At last: the base’s entire fighter squadron, twelve aircraft, was aloft. The mission was combat air patrol, or CAP. The Skyray was a high-speed fighter capable of aerial combat at altitudes of 50,000 feet or more. Patrolling in pairs, the dozen planes of Widener’s squadron already approached their stations, circling lazily, strung out along the Keys and ready to intercept any threat from the south.
And the commander knew that, for the first time in a long, long time, those pilots on the CAP mission faced the possibility of actual combat. Key West was the US territory closest to the island of Cuba, and Cuba had been the focus of an awful lot of American scrutiny over the last few months—scrutiny that had been immensely heightened in this past week. Widener, the base CO, was certain that the President’s speech tonight, the television address announced only earlier in the day, would deal with the crisis.
Having seen the last of his charges into the sky, the commander looked at the hangars and the still-crowded assembly areas on the tarmac. Key West had never hosted so many planes, he knew: In addition to the fighter squadron, he’d been tasked with housing a squadron of RF8A Crusader low-range reconnaissance aircraft and a detachment of large, modern F4 Phantom fighters. He had just learned that a battery of Hawk antiaircraft missiles was on the way from Fort Meade, Maryland, and he been ordered to find space for a full Marine Air Group, fighters and ground-attack planes, that could be ordered here any day from California.
As he returned to the ready room, he was fully aware that something big was going on. Inside the steamy quonset hut, Chief Petty Officer Sullivan adjusted the rabbit ears on the little black-and-white television set, and by the time Widener had reached his desk, the picture was at least recognizable as the President. That Bostonian voice, flat and distinctive, was unmistakable even over the slight hiss of the feeble reception, and as he listened Widener immediately realized that things were every bit as serious as he had suspected.
“The characteristics of these new missile sites indicate two distinct types of installations,” Kennedy said. “Several of them include medium-range ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead for a distance of more than 1,000 nautical miles. Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, D.C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or in the Caribbean area.”
The commander nodded his head in appreciation of the tactic. The President was making it clear that this was not just a problem for the United States, but a threat to the entire hemisphere. Widener had voted for Nixon in the ’60 election, and had been vocally skeptical of the young Democratic Chief Executive following the debacle at the Bay of Pigs—when JFK had refused to authorize the air and naval support that might have given the anti-Castro Cubans of the invasion force a chance at survival. But he could only approve of Kennedy’s resolute approach to the current situation.
He squinted as a picture, a photo reconnaissance shot with labels indicating various installations, replaced the President’s face on the screen. The picture was too fuzzy to make out the details, but he knew he was looking at a missile base on the island nation just ninety miles to the south.
“Additional sites not yet completed appear to be designed for intermediate-range ballistic missiles—capable of traveling more than twice as far—and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere, ranging as far north as Hudson Bay, Canada, and as far south as Lima, Peru,” the President continued, ticking off facts like a prosecutor.
“In addition, jet bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, are now being uncrated and assembled in Cuba, while the necessary air bases are being prepared.…”
1902 hours EST (Monday evening)
Newsroom
NBC Washington Bureau
Washington, D.C.
The reporters clustered around the large TV monitor and watched the address in uncharacteristic silence. Each was aware of history in the making. Each knew that this was a major story, and each mentally ticked off every source that might provide a unique vantage. Each journalist planned phone calls, envisioned interviews, thought about hypothetical assignments.
And each of them, but one, was a man.
Stella Widener didn’t take notes. The President’s address to the nation was being recorded right here in the newsroom, and she would consult the film record—probably many times—before writing her story. In fact, she had written the story, had pieced together the situation before anyone else at her network. But when she’d presented it to her news director just this morning, he’d order her to kill it—because of pressure from the White House. Now, she could only stare at the screen, at that handsome, grim face. She listened to the chilling words in a room that was otherwise silent until, finally, her cynical and worldly colleagues could no longer restrain the need to comment.
“Damn, I thought for sure it was going to be Berlin again,” one veteran newsman finally remarked, when JFK paused to take a breath.
“Nah, this year it’s all about Castro,” another replied knowingly. “And the Russians—this is some serious stuff.”
“Hey, Stella,” said a third. “Good thing you got out of Moscow when you did—they’d probably be sending you to a gulag if you hadn’t finished filming two months ago!”
The gallows humor got a good laugh, heartened by the professional jealousy these men felt for the woman who had scooped them all with the first American film footage shot inside the Kremlin. Since her return to D.C. in late September, Stella had endured a constant barrage of suggestive remarks as veteran newshounds badgered her about how she had gotten Khrushchev to allow her to film the documentary. They wouldn’t believe the truth—that it was good old-fashioned stubbornness and perseverance. She was a good reporter who relied on her skills and professional acumen to get the story.
But, she remembered, there was one dramatic exception. She flushed at a private memory: herself as a young reporter for the Boston Globe…a visit to a hotel suite to interview Massachusetts’ young, handsome, and recently married senator…the interview that had propelled her career to undreamed of heights…the closeness of that familiar voice, and face, that filled the television screen before her now.
“Shh!” she said impatiently, trying to hear the speech—and to will herself away from the guilty memory. The men complied, no doubt because they, too, were fascinated by the portentous address. The President looked tired, Stella thought, as JFK continued. And kind of angry, as well.
“This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base—by the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction—constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas, in flagrant and deliberate defiance of the Rio Pact of 1947, the traditions of this nation and hemisphere, the joint resolution of the 87th Congress, the Charter of the United Nations, and my own public warnings to the Soviets on September 4 and 13. This action also contradicts the repeated assurances of Soviet spokesmen, both publicly and privately delivered, that the arms buildup in Cuba would retain its original defensive character, and that the Soviet Union had no need or desire to station strategic missiles on the territory of any other nation.”
One reporter dashed to a typewriter at the back of the room, and seconds later the machine’s keys chattered loudly, a frantic cadence underlying the urgency of the speech. No one else tore himself away, at least not yet.
“Do you suppose it’s war?” someone mused rhetorically.
“No,” Stella replied. “He wouldn’t be announcing it like this if it was.” She couldn’t help thinking of her brother and father, and knew that if it came to war, they would both be on the front lines.
“The size of this undertaking makes clear that it has been planned for some months,” the President accused. “Yet, only last month, after I had made clear the distinction between any introduction of ground-to-ground missiles and the existence of defensive antiaircraft missiles, the Soviet Government publicly stated on September 11 that, and I quote, ‘the armaments and military equipment sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes,’ that there is, and I quote the Soviet Government, ‘there is no need for the Soviet Government to shift its weapons for a retaliatory blow to any other country, for instance Cuba,’ and that, and I quote their government, ‘the Soviet Union has so powerful rockets to carry these nuclear warheads that there is no need to search for sites for them beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union.’
“That statement was false.”
1905 hours EST (Monday Evening)
Bachelor Officers’ Quarters
82nd Airborne Division
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Second Lieutenant Greg Hartley was drunk, but not drunk enough. It seemed that the 82nd Airborne was going to war: all leaves cancelled for the entire unit, new orders coming down practically by the hour, a general stir of excitement permeating the ranks of officers and men. Still, the division’s junior officers had been issued one last allotment of two beers apiece—just for today. Hartley had quickly consumed his own pair of Old Milwaukees, and since late afternoon had been buying bottles from his fellow officers. The going rate was $2.00 apiece.
In Hartley’s somewhat fog-shrouded mind, it had been a good use of $14.00. Now, however, although he had money in his wallet and thirst in his throat, the supply seemed to have dried up. Having struck out on his last pass through the hall, he staggered slightly as he entered the BOQ’s common room, standing behind a dozen or so other junior officers who all had their attention glued to the television set.
President Kennedy was talking. Hartley didn’t want to watch, or listen, but like a moth drawn to some horrible, consuming flame, he found himself paying attention to his Commander in Chief’s stark, frightening words.
“Only last Thursday, as evidence of this rapid offensive buildup was already in my hand, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko told me in my office that he was instructed to make it clear once again, as he said his government had already done, that Soviet assistance to Cuba, and I quote, ‘pursued solely the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba,’ that, and I quote him, ‘training by Soviet specialists of Cuban nationals in handling defensive armaments was by no means offensive, and if it were otherwise,’ Mr. Gromyko went on, ‘the Soviet Government would never become involved in rendering such assistance.’
“That statement also was false.”
1910 hours EST (Tuesday very early morning)
Chairman’s Office, Kremlin
Moscow, Russian SSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Communist Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, his fist clenched so tightly that the paper crumpled in his hand, read a translated version of the speech as the actual broadcast—carried to Europe by America’s imperial communications satellite, Telstar—droned from a radio speaker nearby. The translation had been delivered to him just during the last hour, courtesy of the American ambassador to the USSR.
In the large but Spartan office with the chairman was Foreign Minister Gromyko, recently returned from the United States, as well as Khrushchev’s military adviser, Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky. Gromyko’s round face was beet red, his flabby jaw clenched as tightly as possible. Malinovsky’s eyes remained downcast.
The other two men read from their own copies of the speech, and they understood the challenge that Kennedy was presenting them all. Both studiously avoided looking at the chairman.
“Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the Resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately,” declared the American Commander in Chief.
“First: To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.”
“How dare he!” Khrushchev demanded hoarsely. “We will destroy him! He will not—he cannot—an impudent neophyte—a mere boy wearing man’s pants!” But the bombast sounded hollow even in his own ears, and the familiar fears rose up.
Have I made a terrible mistake? If only they had discovered the missiles a week, two weeks, from now! All the launchers would be in place, ready to fire! What if…? His thoughts were jumbled, chaotic. He needed to think, to decide, to act! But all he could do was read, and listen, and feel a growing sickness in the pit of his stomach.
The President of the United States continued. “Second: I have directed the continued and increased close surveillance of Cuba and its military buildup. The foreign ministers of the Organization of American States, in their communiqué of October 6, rejected secrecy on such matters in this hemisphere. Should these offensive military preparations continue, thus increasing the threat to the hemisphere, further action will be justified. I have directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities; and I trust that in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians at the sites, the hazards to all concerned of continuing this threat will be recognized.
“Third: It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
1914 hours EST (Monday evening)
“The Tank:” Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting Room
E-Ring, Pentagon, Washington D.C.
Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay chomped down hard on his cigar, then eased the grip of his jaw so that he could furiously puff the faint coal back into fire. All the while he glowered at the man on the television screen. After a few minutes, he couldn’t stand it any longer, pulling the cigar from his mouth and glaring at the Joint Chiefs of Staff seated around him at the table.
Clearly the chairman, General Maxwell Taylor, wasn’t going to say anything. Taylor had parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, had finally risen to be the highest ranking office in the United States Armed Services. Yet now, at the whim of this piss-ant politician from New England, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed frozen and helpless.
It was too much for LeMay. “This is goddamn appeasement! That’s what it is! Christ, we should have bombed the crap out of those sites last week, when we first found out they were there! Instead, we’re pissing around with this ‘quarantine’ bullshit. We may never get another chance like this again!”
LeMay viewed the world from a soldier’s perspective, and he was one hell of a soldier. A man of immense physical courage, he had led waves of bombers in dangerous, low-level raids during World War Two, until he was promoted to command the devastating strategic bombing campaign that finally brought Japan to her knees. He had famously declared “All war is immoral…if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.” Now his job, one he viewed with intense and singular focus, was to see that if the next war came, the United States of America would prevail.
“And how a blockade is going to help, when the missiles are already there, is beyond me,” Army Chief of Staff Earle Wheeler noted glumly.
“Doesn’t he understand that we have ten times as many nukes as Khrushchev?” LeMay demanded in exasperation, realizing that Kennedy knew that fact very well. “That we have a bomber force that can hit the Russkis upside and down, without even launching our rockets? Hell, they don’t have a single bomber that can reach our territory with enough fuel left to turn around and fly home again!”
An Air Force colonel entered the room without knocking. “Sorry to interrupt, Sir,” he said, reporting to LeMay. “But you should know that all units have confirmed Secretary of Defense McNamara’s order raising our readiness level to DEFCON 3.”
“About goddamn time,” the Air Force chief of staff replied, stuffing his cigar back into his mouth. DEFCON 3 was still two levels short of launching the nuclear strike that Strategic Air Command had been preparing for, but at least it was a step in the right direction. The President had ordered the increase in readiness about an hour before his speech. Now additional strategic bombers were being fueled and armed, leaves canceled for airmen and officers alike, and on each base some of the pilots went to their ready rooms, standing by for orders that might come through at any time.
But DEFCON 3 was too small of a step, for all that. Grimly, LeMay hunched forward, planting his elbows on the table as his eyes tried to bore a hole through the television screen. Kennedy had changed tacks now, directing his words—which, in Florida, were translated into Spanish and simultaneously broadcast southward from some dozen different television and radio towers—to the citizens of Fidel Castro’s island nation.
“Finally, I want to say a few words to the captive people of Cuba, to whom this speech is being directly carried by special radio facilities. I speak to you as a friend, as one who knows of your deep attachment to your fatherland, as one who shares your aspirations for liberty and justice for all. And I have watched and the American people have watched with deep sorrow how your nationalist revolution was betrayed—and how your fatherland fell under foreign domination. Now your leaders are no longer Cuban leaders inspired by Cuban ideals. They are puppets and agents of an international conspiracy which has turned Cuba against your friends and neighbors in the Americas, and turned it into the first Latin American country to become a target for nuclear war—the first Latin American country to have these weapons on its soil.
“These new weapons are not in your interest. They contribute nothing to your peace and well-being. They can only undermine it. But this country has no wish to cause you to suffer or to impose any system upon you. We know that your lives and land are being used as pawns by those who deny your freedom. Many times in the past, the Cuban people have risen to throw out tyrants who destroyed their liberty. And I have no doubt that most Cubans today look forward to the time when they will be truly free—free from foreign domination, free to choose their own leaders, free to select their own system, free to own their own land, free to speak and write and worship without fear or degradation. And then shall Cuba be welcomed back to the society of free nations and to the associations of this hemisphere.”
1915 hours EST (Monday night)
Casa Uno, Government Headquarters
El Chico, Cuba
The Spanish-language broadcast of the address had quite a few listeners across the “imprisoned island,” with none paying more attention than a quartet of men seated around a bare wooden table on the second floor of this palatial villa. Cigar smoke clouded the air, much of it emanating from the tall, bearded figure at the head of the table.
Fidel Castro’s eyes were narrowed and his lips compressed in an expression of unconcealed anger. To his right sat his brother, Raul, who listened with a somber air of resignation.
“Eso es basura!” snapped the Cuban leader. “What bullshit! He accuses us of aggression! And all the while his spyplanes fly back and forth above me!”
The third man at the table wore the uniform of a Soviet Army officer. He was Major General Issa Pliyev, commanding officer of Operation Anadyr, the Soviet project to install missiles in Cuba. In addition to the missile batteries, Pliyev commanded some 40,000 highly trained, well-equipped Red Army troops, some of them support units for the missles and supply chain. No less than 10,000 of those men were combat soldiers of the first class, organized into four motorized rifle regiments and deployed around Cuba. A squadron of IL-28 Ilyushin bombers—capable of carrying nuclear bombs—and MiG 21 fighters, the front-line Soviet interceptor, had also been delivered to the island.
Still, Pliyev was widely known to be skeptical of the mission and its prospects, and his dour expression indicated that nothing he was hearing now did anything to improve his outlook.
“And don’t forget la Bahia de Cochinas!” snapped the fourth man, brooding and handsome, clad in an unmarked fatigue shirt and wearing a black beret on his head. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was widely known to be Castro’s right hand man, and had been instrumental in bringing the Soviets and Cubans together for the breathtakingly ambitious Operation Anadyr. Now he inflamed El Máximo Lider’s mind as he invoked the abortive landing at the Bay of Pigs, a year and a half earlier.
“Yes!” Castro agreed with a shout. “This President has the audacity to send our own traitors against us—only to abandon them on our shores! We know he is a coward. But is he a madman as well?”
“Perhaps he is crazy like a fox, mi lider,” Che suggested. “The Americans are ever striving to get their lackeys to do their fighting for them—in their war against the Nazis, and too at the Bay of Pigs.”
Castro nodded, absorbing the famed guerilla’s words, knowing of Che’s long service to the socialist cause. Now, Guevera’s eyes were bright, but he watched the Soviet general through narrowed eyes, as if wary of imminent betrayal. If Pliyev noticed the revolutionary’s attention, he gave no sign, merely scowling as he strained to make out Kennedy’s words.
“My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead—months in which both our patience and our will shall be tested, months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.”
Abruptly, Fidel pushed back his chair so hard that it toppled over. Standing up, waving his cigar like it was a weapon, he stalked around the room. “Eso hijo de puta!” he cursed. “That son of a bitch! This means war! I will mobilize my army tonight! Let the yanquis come! They have no idea of the hellstorm that will greet them on our beaches!”
1917 hours EST (Monday night)
Flight Deck
CVN-65 USS Enterprise
Caribbean Sea
A night landing on an aircraft carrier was never an easy task. Now, as Lieutenant Derek Widener maneuvered his F4 “Phantom” toward the stern of the massive ship, he felt the added complexity of martial tension. The tingling sense of alertness had permeated his two-hour flight, a combat air patrol over Enterprise and her supporting vessels.
Ensign King, in the second seat, fed him altitude and bearing information as the pilot kept his eyes on his airspeed indicator, and on that broad flight deck before and below him. The Big E’s landing lights burned low, a security precaution. The presence of the dark island of Cuba—the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay lay 150 miles to the north—seemed to exert a dark gravitational pull far in excess of any natural physical force. Too, Soviet submarines were reported to be in nearby waters. Their torpedoes represented a lethal threat even to the mighty vessel.
Still, Widener was a gifted pilot, and his skills and training took over as the big jet settled and slowed, the flight deck growing gradually larger in his field of view. The world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was a massive ship, the largest warship ever launched, and he should sure as hell be able to land on it! He watched the landing officer, and cut his engine at the man’s throat-slash sign.
The Phantom, with its phenomenally powerful twin jet engines and ridiculously small, swept wings, thumped to the deck, and the tailhook snagged the arresting gear. With a sudden shock of deceleration, the lieutenant jerked forward, restrained by his safety harness as he felt the aircraft come to a sudden halt.
Quickly his crew chief approached, wheeling up a ladder as Widener popped the canopy and stiffly climbed out of the seat. Ensign King followed him out of the cockpit to step onto the platform atop the large, rolling ladder.
“Nice landing, LT,” said Petty Officer Tuttle from below, with an enthusiastic thumbs up. “You might want to hurry into the briefing compartment. The President is still giving his speech, and the comm guys have managed to pull in a live feed.”
“Thanks, Sam, I will,” Widener replied, scooting down the ladder by sliding his hands along the twin railings. On the deck, he unstrapped his helmet as he jogged to the hatch leading into the pilots’ compartment. Inside, several dozen fliers were gathered on the bench seats of the briefing room, watching a fuzzy signal on the television set up at the podium. Widener realized he’d arrived just in time to hear the conclusion of the address.
“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world,” President Kennedy said. For the first time in Widener’s memory, JFK look rather old and tired. His demeanor on the small screen remained stern and unwavering.
“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.
“Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.
“Thank you and good night.”
1918 hours EST (Monday evening)
Oval Office, The White House
Washington D.C.
The bright klieg lights went out, and the President blinked, squinting into the sudden semi-darkness. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead as the technicians quickly began to gather up their equipment. Bobby stepped forward to offer a hand, but Jack curtly shook his head, pushing himself to his feet with only a small grimace.
“How do you think it went?” he asked, as the two brothers and Press Secretary Salinger started for the side door.
“It was perfect,” Bobby said sincerely. “The right tone, tough and steady—a solid, measured response.”
“You said exactly what needed to be said,” Salinger chimed in.
“Well, that’s it then, unless the son of a bitch fouls it up,” JFK said, holding up a hand to brace himself against the frame as he passed through the office door.
Secret Service agent Bob Morris reached out to open the next door, and the President nodded his thanks as he passed through. Morris fell in behind the Chief Executive as he moved toward the elevator.
“I’m going to look in on Jackie and the kids,” Jack announced, finally leaving his brother and his press secretary behind. The Secret Service agent followed him to the elevator but stopped outside the car.
“Good night, Mr. President,” he said.
“Good night, Bob. And thanks,” JFK said wearily, before the door closed and the elevator carried him up to the Residence, where his wife and two children were waiting.
The sound room resembled a closet, wedged into a small space between the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. Though the speech had ended several minutes earlier, two reels of tape still rolled, steadily spooling duplicate copies of dead air. Finally, Ron Pickett reached out and turned the knobs, shutting the recorders down.
He was sweating, slightly. Even though the speech had been broadcast on all the networks and was recorded by countless agencies both official and private, he felt the burden of making sure that his recordings were perfect. The taping machines that almost filled this small room would provide the official documentation of the President’s speech. Perhaps nobody would ever know about them, or hear them, but even so Rickett felt the pressure of that responsibility like a physical weight.
It was a weight he bore willingly, even eagerly, because he could do it so well. Now he checked the needles, reassured that they all rested at “0,” accurately indicating that there was no sound reaching the microphones in the Presidential office. The needles monitoring the mics in the conference room flickered slightly, and Pickett knew that the cleaning crew was in there, quietly dusting, moving the chairs around. A vacuum cleaner suddenly started to whine, and the needles flickered upward.
Good. All was as it should be. Pickett boxed up the two duplicate tapes of the speech, labeled each in his precise, neatly blocked hand, and placed them on the shelf next to the tapes of all that month’s eventful discussion. History had been made, was still being made, in this building, across the city, the nation, and the world—but that reality was far from his mind.
Instead, as he left the room, closed the door, and locked it under the watchful eyes of Secret Service agent Morris, Ron Pickett merely felt the calm satisfaction of a job well done.
2300 hours
Soviet Submarine B-59, Submerged
1300 miles NE of Cuba, Atlantic Ocean
The vast, rolling expanse of black ocean waters parted suddenly, churning into froth as a metallic prow and sleek, tapered sail emerged from the sea to glisten in the night air. Waves spilled to port and starboard as the rest of the boat broke the surface. Immediately the three diesel engines chugged into life, propelled the submarine even as they spun additional energy into the dynamos that began to reenergize the exhausted batteries.
Captain (2nd Rank) Valentin Savitsky, as usual, was the first one up through the hatch into the small observation platform atop the sail. He couldn’t see stars through the overcast skies above, but at least the ocean surface was reasonably calm. The long, narrow deck below him remained above the waves, and he immediately opened the speaking tube and addressed his executive officer, in the command compartment directly below.
“Send the men up to the surface in shifts. Every man gets thirty minutes of fresh air. We will submerge as soon as the batteries are recharged.”
“Da, captain,” replied Commander Vasily Arkhipov, gratitude in his voice.
Indeed, that gratitude would soon permeate the entire boat, Savitsky knew. The submarine, a diesel-powered boat of the Foxtrot class, had been designed for the defense of the Soviet coasts and nearby ocean waters. It was a fairly reliable vessel, only four years old, but the design lacked several features of more modern submarines—in fact, except for the fact that it was larger, the Foxtrots were not very different from late WW2-era German U-boats.
And they had never been intended for a mission like this. Savitsky and his crew had been at sea for more than three weeks, running submerged except when they needed to surface to recharge the sub’s powerful batteries by running the diesel engines—and then only in the dead of night. They had already crossed some ten thousand miles of ocean, venturing farther from Mother Russia than any Soviet submarine had ever done before. And for weeks, now, the problems had been mounting.
The submarine was one of four Foxtrots dispatched toward Cuba as part of Operation Anadyr, but Savitsky had no means of communicating directly with the other boats. Contact and orders from Soviet Naval headquarters, in Murmansk, was spotty, with a few long-range instructions reaching the submarine when it was on the surface. But those orders had contained precious little information, and absolutely nothing about the rest of the submarines, or anything else involving Cuba or the Americans. And constrained by the need for radio silence, Savitsky had been unable to send any reports back to the USSR, or to any other Soviet Bloc ships at sea. Secrecy in this mission was paramount: the Americans were not to have any clue that the Soviet navy was venturing into the western Atlantic Ocean.
He and his crew existed in their own little claustrophobic universe, and it was a universe growing more uninhabitable by the day. Forty-eight hours ago the boat’s ventilation system had failed, and nothing the crew had done had been able to get the central fan unit to operate again. The captain suspected that the culprit was the high humidity, a corrosive effect of the steamy air caused by the warmth of these tropical waters. To compensate, they kept the hatches open between compartments, but even so the temperature in the boat was running at a steady 110 degrees Fahrenheit. In the engine room, where the diesel’s were not cooling properly, it was even worse, ranging 20 or 30 degrees warmer than the rest of the boat—a virtual oven.
And the air quality was going from bad to worse. Carbon dioxide concentrations had risen to dangerous levels, and it was not uncommon for one or more of Savitsky’s sailors to faint at his post. The diesel coolers had become completely inoperative, probably clogged with salt, so the overheating engines continued to raise the temperature in the hull. The only respite from the poisonous air were these precious minutes atop the water, concealed only by the cloak of darkness.
The previous night they had surfaced into stormy seas. The B-59 had churned along, charging her batteries, but the thunderous waves sweeping over the deck had prevented the captain from allowing any of his crewmen to come up for a breath of fresh air. So they had sweltered and gasped through another day.
Wiping the spray from his forehead with an oily rag, the captain looked down to the foredeck, where sailors were already emerging from the forward hatch, stretching and breathing deeply as they escaped the stale air inside the hull.
“Captain?” Arkhipov’s voice echoed in the speaking tube.
“What is it, Vasily Andreivich?”
“Feklisov, sir. He asks for permission to forego his deck time. He doesn’t want to leave his baby.”
Savitsky uttered a bark of laughter. “Permission granted,” he said.
He thought of Lt. Commander Anatoly Feklisov and his charge, which was the one piece of modern equipment on this old-fashioned boat. The “baby” was a very special weapon, a type 53-58 torpedo. Like the other twenty-one torpedoes of B-59’s weapon complement, it was capable of running for more than six miles under the ocean while it sought the metal hull of an enemy ship. It could be pre-set before launch to curve through an arc, to climb or to dive, as it sought a target. Unlike the other torpedoes, however, it was not equipped with a standard TNT-explosive warhead. Instead, Feklisov’s torpedo was capped by the RDS-9 warhead, a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb. The weapon was nearly as powerful as the one the Americans had dropped on Hiroshima during WW2. It was this torpedo that made the B-59 a truly powerful ship of war. Feksilov would do well to keep a close eye on that device.
An hour later, again below decks, the captain made his way to the forward torpedo room, where he found the lieutenant commander, as usual, stationed right beside the nuclear-armed torpedo, encased as it was in its shiny gray tube. Eleven of the submarine’s twelve torpedo tubes were loaded with conventional weapons, but the twelfth tube was empty, merely waiting for this lethal device to be activated and slipped into firing position. Once that had been done, a process that took only about five minutes, the B-59 could unleash hell against any American warship, or even devastate a small fleet.
“How fares the boat, Comrade Captain?” asked the bookish younger officer. Lieutenant Commander Anatoly Feklisov was not so much a sailor as an engineer, in the captain’s eyes. It was his job to tend the nuclear warhead, to maintain it, and to make sure that it would work if Savitsky ever ordered it to be fired. But the captain liked and trusted the young man, who sometimes seemed scarcely older than a boy.
“Not so good, Anatoly Yakovlivich,” Savitsky replied glumly. “The air is shit, and getting shittier.” He looked at the sleek gray container next to Feklisov, and thought about the power there. “But at least we can kick the Americans in the ass if they try to give us any trouble, eh?” he added, forcing a laugh.
“That we can, Captain. That we can,” Feklisov agreed.
Meanwhile, the temperature in the engine room continued to climb, and the air grew even more stale, heavy with CO2. The duty engineer, feeling dizzy, had to step forward for a moment, to get a few breaths of the comparably “fresh” air from the command compartment in the middle of the boat. He didn’t hear the noise, only a small snap really, that emanated from the rear of the engine room.
There, in the very farthest aft part of the boat, a tired roller bearing had been turning relentlessly for more than three weeks, cradling the steady rotation of the starboard propeller shaft. Now, suddenly, a tiny fatigue crack broke the perfect seal where the shaft passed through the outer hull of the submarine. Unseen and unsensed by any crewmember, the crack was so small that only the tiniest trickle of water, at first, could force its way into the boat.
One: Operation Anadyr
“What if we throw a hedgehog down Uncle Sam’s pants?”
Communist Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev
Final Failure
Eyeball to Eyeball
Book 1 of an Alternate
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
by Douglas Niles
.
Contents
Prologue: P-Hour
One: Operation Anadyr
Two: Mission 3101
Three: ExComm
Four: Countdown to Quarantine
Five: DEFCON 2
Six: Foxtrot B-59
Pre-Crisis Timeline
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Selected Bibliography
About the Author
“Now the question really is what action we take which lessens the chance of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure.”
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
ExComm Meeting, 18 October 1962
White House, Washington D.C.
Final Failure is a five-book story of alternate history, set during a fictional Cuban Nuclear War of 1962. Some of the characters are actual historical figures, while others are the creations of the author. In each case, the narrative follows the conventions of historical fiction with regard to accurate portrayal of events…until a fictional incident on October 27, 1962, becomes the point of departure into alternate history.
In other words, this is a true tale of What Might Have Been.
For additional details, and updates regarding upcoming books in the Final Failure series, please visit douglasniles.com or facebook.com/AuthorDouglasNiles.
To Michael S. Dobson,
In sincere remembrance of all the history, both actual and “alternate,” we’ve shared over the years
Prologue: P-Hour
“Let every nation know…that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961
22 October 1962
1852 hours EST (Monday Evening)
Oval Office, The White House
Washington D.C.
The Oval Office had been transformed into a reasonable approximation of a television studio. Sound and power cables snaked across the floor, which had been covered with a tarpaulin to protect the carpet. The massive wooden desk, constructed from timbers once part of the warship HMS Resolute, was now draped in black felt, with a backdrop of similar material, decorated only by the Presidential flag, hanging behind. Furniture was shunted aside to make room for multiple microphones, two cameras, recording equipment, and large banks of lights.
Now that all was ready, the technicians and publicity people withdrew. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and the President’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, were the only people in the Oval Office as the President entered from the side door, walking stiffly as he approached his chair. With one hand propped on the corner of the desk, John Fitzgerald Kennedy limped to the seat and collapsed, wincing in pain.
His younger brother offered no reaction. Jack Kennedy’s back pain was a daily feature of his life, and the President resented any attempts at sympathy or what he described as coddling. Eventually, he would accept a shot or two of pain medication, but as the clock approached the moment that the administration had designated as P-Hour—7:00 PM on this crucial evening—such steroid and narcotic relief would have to wait.
The television cameras were already focused, hulking robots with glass eyes trained on the massive desk and the man sitting behind it. Bobby adjusted a pillow behind his brother’s back, helping him to sit straight in the chair.
“How’s that, Jack?” he asked. “Do you want another pillow? Should I move the chair back a bit?”
“No, it’s fine—thanks. Let’s get going,” the chief executive replied curtly.
Evelyn Lincoln reached a brush toward the President’s slightly mussed brown hair, but he waved her away and straightened it using his hand.
With a glance at the clock, JFK nodded his readiness.
“Better send them in,” he said.
Bobby went to the door and opened it, allowing Press Secretary Pierre Salinger to lead the cameramen and several sound and lighting technicians, all of them men dressed in suits, into the office. Each took up his station, the sound men kneeling before the black-draped platform as the bright lights came on one by one, washing the desk and its occupant in a bright arc of illumination. Bobby saw that Jack’s face was already composed, free of any evidence of pain. Instead, he looked stern, serious…Presidential.
With an eye on the clock, Salinger nodded at the President. “Alright, Sir. We’re on in ten seconds.” He paused, hand upraised, and counted down with his fingers.
“Three, two, one.”
John F. Kennedy stared squarely into the camera and began to speak, his familiar New England twang clipping each word with earnest intensity.
“Good evening, my fellow citizens.
“This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
“Upon receiving the first preliminary hard information of this nature last Tuesday morning at 9 A.M., I directed that our surveillance be stepped up. And having now confirmed and completed our evaluation of the evidence and our decision on a course of action, this government feels obliged to report this new crisis to you in fullest detail.”
1901 hours EST (Monday Evening)
Harry S. Truman Annex
Key West Naval Air Station
Key West, Florida
Commander Alex Widener stood on the tarmac just outside of the pilots’ ready room and watched the last of his F6A Skyrays, turbojet engine roaring as the afterburner spewed yellow flame, shoot down the runway. The powerful delta-wing fighter rose swiftly into the sunset shimmering over the Florida Strait.
At last: the base’s entire fighter squadron, twelve aircraft, was aloft. The mission was combat air patrol, or CAP. The Skyray was a high-speed fighter capable of aerial combat at altitudes of 50,000 feet or more. Patrolling in pairs, the dozen planes of Widener’s squadron already approached their stations, circling lazily, strung out along the Keys and ready to intercept any threat from the south.
And the commander knew that, for the first time in a long, long time, those pilots on the CAP mission faced the possibility of actual combat. Key West was the US territory closest to the island of Cuba, and Cuba had been the focus of an awful lot of American scrutiny over the last few months—scrutiny that had been immensely heightened in this past week. Widener, the base CO, was certain that the President’s speech tonight, the television address announced only earlier in the day, would deal with the crisis.
Having seen the last of his charges into the sky, the commander looked at the hangars and the still-crowded assembly areas on the tarmac. Key West had never hosted so many planes, he knew: In addition to the fighter squadron, he’d been tasked with housing a squadron of RF8A Crusader low-range reconnaissance aircraft and a detachment of large, modern F4 Phantom fighters. He had just learned that a battery of Hawk antiaircraft missiles was on the way from Fort Meade, Maryland, and he been ordered to find space for a full Marine Air Group, fighters and ground-attack planes, that could be ordered here any day from California.
As he returned to the ready room, he was fully aware that something big was going on. Inside the steamy quonset hut, Chief Petty Officer Sullivan adjusted the rabbit ears on the little black-and-white television set, and by the time Widener had reached his desk, the picture was at least recognizable as the President. That Bostonian voice, flat and distinctive, was unmistakable even over the slight hiss of the feeble reception, and as he listened Widener immediately realized that things were every bit as serious as he had suspected.
“The characteristics of these new missile sites indicate two distinct types of installations,” Kennedy said. “Several of them include medium-range ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead for a distance of more than 1,000 nautical miles. Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, D.C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or in the Caribbean area.”
The commander nodded his head in appreciation of the tactic. The President was making it clear that this was not just a problem for the United States, but a threat to the entire hemisphere. Widener had voted for Nixon in the ’60 election, and had been vocally skeptical of the young Democratic Chief Executive following the debacle at the Bay of Pigs—when JFK had refused to authorize the air and naval support that might have given the anti-Castro Cubans of the invasion force a chance at survival. But he could only approve of Kennedy’s resolute approach to the current situation.
He squinted as a picture, a photo reconnaissance shot with labels indicating various installations, replaced the President’s face on the screen. The picture was too fuzzy to make out the details, but he knew he was looking at a missile base on the island nation just ninety miles to the south.
“Additional sites not yet completed appear to be designed for intermediate-range ballistic missiles—capable of traveling more than twice as far—and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere, ranging as far north as Hudson Bay, Canada, and as far south as Lima, Peru,” the President continued, ticking off facts like a prosecutor.
“In addition, jet bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, are now being uncrated and assembled in Cuba, while the necessary air bases are being prepared.…”
1902 hours EST (Monday evening)
Newsroom
NBC Washington Bureau
Washington, D.C.
The reporters clustered around the large TV monitor and watched the address in uncharacteristic silence. Each was aware of history in the making. Each knew that this was a major story, and each mentally ticked off every source that might provide a unique vantage. Each journalist planned phone calls, envisioned interviews, thought about hypothetical assignments.
And each of them, but one, was a man.
Stella Widener didn’t take notes. The President’s address to the nation was being recorded right here in the newsroom, and she would consult the film record—probably many times—before writing her story. In fact, she had written the story, had pieced together the situation before anyone else at her network. But when she’d presented it to her news director just this morning, he’d order her to kill it—because of pressure from the White House. Now, she could only stare at the screen, at that handsome, grim face. She listened to the chilling words in a room that was otherwise silent until, finally, her cynical and worldly colleagues could no longer restrain the need to comment.
“Damn, I thought for sure it was going to be Berlin again,” one veteran newsman finally remarked, when JFK paused to take a breath.
“Nah, this year it’s all about Castro,” another replied knowingly. “And the Russians—this is some serious stuff.”
“Hey, Stella,” said a third. “Good thing you got out of Moscow when you did—they’d probably be sending you to a gulag if you hadn’t finished filming two months ago!”
The gallows humor got a good laugh, heartened by the professional jealousy these men felt for the woman who had scooped them all with the first American film footage shot inside the Kremlin. Since her return to D.C. in late September, Stella had endured a constant barrage of suggestive remarks as veteran newshounds badgered her about how she had gotten Khrushchev to allow her to film the documentary. They wouldn’t believe the truth—that it was good old-fashioned stubbornness and perseverance. She was a good reporter who relied on her skills and professional acumen to get the story.
But, she remembered, there was one dramatic exception. She flushed at a private memory: herself as a young reporter for the Boston Globe…a visit to a hotel suite to interview Massachusetts’ young, handsome, and recently married senator…the interview that had propelled her career to undreamed of heights…the closeness of that familiar voice, and face, that filled the television screen before her now.
“Shh!” she said impatiently, trying to hear the speech—and to will herself away from the guilty memory. The men complied, no doubt because they, too, were fascinated by the portentous address. The President looked tired, Stella thought, as JFK continued. And kind of angry, as well.
“This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base—by the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction—constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas, in flagrant and deliberate defiance of the Rio Pact of 1947, the traditions of this nation and hemisphere, the joint resolution of the 87th Congress, the Charter of the United Nations, and my own public warnings to the Soviets on September 4 and 13. This action also contradicts the repeated assurances of Soviet spokesmen, both publicly and privately delivered, that the arms buildup in Cuba would retain its original defensive character, and that the Soviet Union had no need or desire to station strategic missiles on the territory of any other nation.”
One reporter dashed to a typewriter at the back of the room, and seconds later the machine’s keys chattered loudly, a frantic cadence underlying the urgency of the speech. No one else tore himself away, at least not yet.
“Do you suppose it’s war?” someone mused rhetorically.
“No,” Stella replied. “He wouldn’t be announcing it like this if it was.” She couldn’t help thinking of her brother and father, and knew that if it came to war, they would both be on the front lines.
“The size of this undertaking makes clear that it has been planned for some months,” the President accused. “Yet, only last month, after I had made clear the distinction between any introduction of ground-to-ground missiles and the existence of defensive antiaircraft missiles, the Soviet Government publicly stated on September 11 that, and I quote, ‘the armaments and military equipment sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes,’ that there is, and I quote the Soviet Government, ‘there is no need for the Soviet Government to shift its weapons for a retaliatory blow to any other country, for instance Cuba,’ and that, and I quote their government, ‘the Soviet Union has so powerful rockets to carry these nuclear warheads that there is no need to search for sites for them beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union.’
“That statement was false.”
1905 hours EST (Monday Evening)
Bachelor Officers’ Quarters
82nd Airborne Division
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Second Lieutenant Greg Hartley was drunk, but not drunk enough. It seemed that the 82nd Airborne was going to war: all leaves cancelled for the entire unit, new orders coming down practically by the hour, a general stir of excitement permeating the ranks of officers and men. Still, the division’s junior officers had been issued one last allotment of two beers apiece—just for today. Hartley had quickly consumed his own pair of Old Milwaukees, and since late afternoon had been buying bottles from his fellow officers. The going rate was $2.00 apiece.
In Hartley’s somewhat fog-shrouded mind, it had been a good use of $14.00. Now, however, although he had money in his wallet and thirst in his throat, the supply seemed to have dried up. Having struck out on his last pass through the hall, he staggered slightly as he entered the BOQ’s common room, standing behind a dozen or so other junior officers who all had their attention glued to the television set.
President Kennedy was talking. Hartley didn’t want to watch, or listen, but like a moth drawn to some horrible, consuming flame, he found himself paying attention to his Commander in Chief’s stark, frightening words.
“Only last Thursday, as evidence of this rapid offensive buildup was already in my hand, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko told me in my office that he was instructed to make it clear once again, as he said his government had already done, that Soviet assistance to Cuba, and I quote, ‘pursued solely the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba,’ that, and I quote him, ‘training by Soviet specialists of Cuban nationals in handling defensive armaments was by no means offensive, and if it were otherwise,’ Mr. Gromyko went on, ‘the Soviet Government would never become involved in rendering such assistance.’
“That statement also was false.”
1910 hours EST (Tuesday very early morning)
Chairman’s Office, Kremlin
Moscow, Russian SSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Communist Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, his fist clenched so tightly that the paper crumpled in his hand, read a translated version of the speech as the actual broadcast—carried to Europe by America’s imperial communications satellite, Telstar—droned from a radio speaker nearby. The translation had been delivered to him just during the last hour, courtesy of the American ambassador to the USSR.
In the large but Spartan office with the chairman was Foreign Minister Gromyko, recently returned from the United States, as well as Khrushchev’s military adviser, Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky. Gromyko’s round face was beet red, his flabby jaw clenched as tightly as possible. Malinovsky’s eyes remained downcast.
The other two men read from their own copies of the speech, and they understood the challenge that Kennedy was presenting them all. Both studiously avoided looking at the chairman.
“Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the Resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately,” declared the American Commander in Chief.
“First: To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.”
“How dare he!” Khrushchev demanded hoarsely. “We will destroy him! He will not—he cannot—an impudent neophyte—a mere boy wearing man’s pants!” But the bombast sounded hollow even in his own ears, and the familiar fears rose up.
Have I made a terrible mistake? If only they had discovered the missiles a week, two weeks, from now! All the launchers would be in place, ready to fire! What if…? His thoughts were jumbled, chaotic. He needed to think, to decide, to act! But all he could do was read, and listen, and feel a growing sickness in the pit of his stomach.
The President of the United States continued. “Second: I have directed the continued and increased close surveillance of Cuba and its military buildup. The foreign ministers of the Organization of American States, in their communiqué of October 6, rejected secrecy on such matters in this hemisphere. Should these offensive military preparations continue, thus increasing the threat to the hemisphere, further action will be justified. I have directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities; and I trust that in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians at the sites, the hazards to all concerned of continuing this threat will be recognized.
“Third: It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
1914 hours EST (Monday evening)
“The Tank:” Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting Room
E-Ring, Pentagon, Washington D.C.
Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay chomped down hard on his cigar, then eased the grip of his jaw so that he could furiously puff the faint coal back into fire. All the while he glowered at the man on the television screen. After a few minutes, he couldn’t stand it any longer, pulling the cigar from his mouth and glaring at the Joint Chiefs of Staff seated around him at the table.
Clearly the chairman, General Maxwell Taylor, wasn’t going to say anything. Taylor had parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, had finally risen to be the highest ranking office in the United States Armed Services. Yet now, at the whim of this piss-ant politician from New England, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed frozen and helpless.
It was too much for LeMay. “This is goddamn appeasement! That’s what it is! Christ, we should have bombed the crap out of those sites last week, when we first found out they were there! Instead, we’re pissing around with this ‘quarantine’ bullshit. We may never get another chance like this again!”
LeMay viewed the world from a soldier’s perspective, and he was one hell of a soldier. A man of immense physical courage, he had led waves of bombers in dangerous, low-level raids during World War Two, until he was promoted to command the devastating strategic bombing campaign that finally brought Japan to her knees. He had famously declared “All war is immoral…if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.” Now his job, one he viewed with intense and singular focus, was to see that if the next war came, the United States of America would prevail.
“And how a blockade is going to help, when the missiles are already there, is beyond me,” Army Chief of Staff Earle Wheeler noted glumly.
“Doesn’t he understand that we have ten times as many nukes as Khrushchev?” LeMay demanded in exasperation, realizing that Kennedy knew that fact very well. “That we have a bomber force that can hit the Russkis upside and down, without even launching our rockets? Hell, they don’t have a single bomber that can reach our territory with enough fuel left to turn around and fly home again!”
An Air Force colonel entered the room without knocking. “Sorry to interrupt, Sir,” he said, reporting to LeMay. “But you should know that all units have confirmed Secretary of Defense McNamara’s order raising our readiness level to DEFCON 3.”
“About goddamn time,” the Air Force chief of staff replied, stuffing his cigar back into his mouth. DEFCON 3 was still two levels short of launching the nuclear strike that Strategic Air Command had been preparing for, but at least it was a step in the right direction. The President had ordered the increase in readiness about an hour before his speech. Now additional strategic bombers were being fueled and armed, leaves canceled for airmen and officers alike, and on each base some of the pilots went to their ready rooms, standing by for orders that might come through at any time.
But DEFCON 3 was too small of a step, for all that. Grimly, LeMay hunched forward, planting his elbows on the table as his eyes tried to bore a hole through the television screen. Kennedy had changed tacks now, directing his words—which, in Florida, were translated into Spanish and simultaneously broadcast southward from some dozen different television and radio towers—to the citizens of Fidel Castro’s island nation.
“Finally, I want to say a few words to the captive people of Cuba, to whom this speech is being directly carried by special radio facilities. I speak to you as a friend, as one who knows of your deep attachment to your fatherland, as one who shares your aspirations for liberty and justice for all. And I have watched and the American people have watched with deep sorrow how your nationalist revolution was betrayed—and how your fatherland fell under foreign domination. Now your leaders are no longer Cuban leaders inspired by Cuban ideals. They are puppets and agents of an international conspiracy which has turned Cuba against your friends and neighbors in the Americas, and turned it into the first Latin American country to become a target for nuclear war—the first Latin American country to have these weapons on its soil.
“These new weapons are not in your interest. They contribute nothing to your peace and well-being. They can only undermine it. But this country has no wish to cause you to suffer or to impose any system upon you. We know that your lives and land are being used as pawns by those who deny your freedom. Many times in the past, the Cuban people have risen to throw out tyrants who destroyed their liberty. And I have no doubt that most Cubans today look forward to the time when they will be truly free—free from foreign domination, free to choose their own leaders, free to select their own system, free to own their own land, free to speak and write and worship without fear or degradation. And then shall Cuba be welcomed back to the society of free nations and to the associations of this hemisphere.”
1915 hours EST (Monday night)
Casa Uno, Government Headquarters
El Chico, Cuba
The Spanish-language broadcast of the address had quite a few listeners across the “imprisoned island,” with none paying more attention than a quartet of men seated around a bare wooden table on the second floor of this palatial villa. Cigar smoke clouded the air, much of it emanating from the tall, bearded figure at the head of the table.
Fidel Castro’s eyes were narrowed and his lips compressed in an expression of unconcealed anger. To his right sat his brother, Raul, who listened with a somber air of resignation.
“Eso es basura!” snapped the Cuban leader. “What bullshit! He accuses us of aggression! And all the while his spyplanes fly back and forth above me!”
The third man at the table wore the uniform of a Soviet Army officer. He was Major General Issa Pliyev, commanding officer of Operation Anadyr, the Soviet project to install missiles in Cuba. In addition to the missile batteries, Pliyev commanded some 40,000 highly trained, well-equipped Red Army troops, some of them support units for the missles and supply chain. No less than 10,000 of those men were combat soldiers of the first class, organized into four motorized rifle regiments and deployed around Cuba. A squadron of IL-28 Ilyushin bombers—capable of carrying nuclear bombs—and MiG 21 fighters, the front-line Soviet interceptor, had also been delivered to the island.
Still, Pliyev was widely known to be skeptical of the mission and its prospects, and his dour expression indicated that nothing he was hearing now did anything to improve his outlook.
“And don’t forget la Bahia de Cochinas!” snapped the fourth man, brooding and handsome, clad in an unmarked fatigue shirt and wearing a black beret on his head. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was widely known to be Castro’s right hand man, and had been instrumental in bringing the Soviets and Cubans together for the breathtakingly ambitious Operation Anadyr. Now he inflamed El Máximo Lider’s mind as he invoked the abortive landing at the Bay of Pigs, a year and a half earlier.
“Yes!” Castro agreed with a shout. “This President has the audacity to send our own traitors against us—only to abandon them on our shores! We know he is a coward. But is he a madman as well?”
“Perhaps he is crazy like a fox, mi lider,” Che suggested. “The Americans are ever striving to get their lackeys to do their fighting for them—in their war against the Nazis, and too at the Bay of Pigs.”
Castro nodded, absorbing the famed guerilla’s words, knowing of Che’s long service to the socialist cause. Now, Guevera’s eyes were bright, but he watched the Soviet general through narrowed eyes, as if wary of imminent betrayal. If Pliyev noticed the revolutionary’s attention, he gave no sign, merely scowling as he strained to make out Kennedy’s words.
“My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead—months in which both our patience and our will shall be tested, months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.”
Abruptly, Fidel pushed back his chair so hard that it toppled over. Standing up, waving his cigar like it was a weapon, he stalked around the room. “Eso hijo de puta!” he cursed. “That son of a bitch! This means war! I will mobilize my army tonight! Let the yanquis come! They have no idea of the hellstorm that will greet them on our beaches!”
1917 hours EST (Monday night)
Flight Deck
CVN-65 USS Enterprise
Caribbean Sea
A night landing on an aircraft carrier was never an easy task. Now, as Lieutenant Derek Widener maneuvered his F4 “Phantom” toward the stern of the massive ship, he felt the added complexity of martial tension. The tingling sense of alertness had permeated his two-hour flight, a combat air patrol over Enterprise and her supporting vessels.
Ensign King, in the second seat, fed him altitude and bearing information as the pilot kept his eyes on his airspeed indicator, and on that broad flight deck before and below him. The Big E’s landing lights burned low, a security precaution. The presence of the dark island of Cuba—the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay lay 150 miles to the north—seemed to exert a dark gravitational pull far in excess of any natural physical force. Too, Soviet submarines were reported to be in nearby waters. Their torpedoes represented a lethal threat even to the mighty vessel.
Still, Widener was a gifted pilot, and his skills and training took over as the big jet settled and slowed, the flight deck growing gradually larger in his field of view. The world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was a massive ship, the largest warship ever launched, and he should sure as hell be able to land on it! He watched the landing officer, and cut his engine at the man’s throat-slash sign.
The Phantom, with its phenomenally powerful twin jet engines and ridiculously small, swept wings, thumped to the deck, and the tailhook snagged the arresting gear. With a sudden shock of deceleration, the lieutenant jerked forward, restrained by his safety harness as he felt the aircraft come to a sudden halt.
Quickly his crew chief approached, wheeling up a ladder as Widener popped the canopy and stiffly climbed out of the seat. Ensign King followed him out of the cockpit to step onto the platform atop the large, rolling ladder.
“Nice landing, LT,” said Petty Officer Tuttle from below, with an enthusiastic thumbs up. “You might want to hurry into the briefing compartment. The President is still giving his speech, and the comm guys have managed to pull in a live feed.”
“Thanks, Sam, I will,” Widener replied, scooting down the ladder by sliding his hands along the twin railings. On the deck, he unstrapped his helmet as he jogged to the hatch leading into the pilots’ compartment. Inside, several dozen fliers were gathered on the bench seats of the briefing room, watching a fuzzy signal on the television set up at the podium. Widener realized he’d arrived just in time to hear the conclusion of the address.
“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world,” President Kennedy said. For the first time in Widener’s memory, JFK look rather old and tired. His demeanor on the small screen remained stern and unwavering.
“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.
“Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.
“Thank you and good night.”
1918 hours EST (Monday evening)
Oval Office, The White House
Washington D.C.
The bright klieg lights went out, and the President blinked, squinting into the sudden semi-darkness. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead as the technicians quickly began to gather up their equipment. Bobby stepped forward to offer a hand, but Jack curtly shook his head, pushing himself to his feet with only a small grimace.
“How do you think it went?” he asked, as the two brothers and Press Secretary Salinger started for the side door.
“It was perfect,” Bobby said sincerely. “The right tone, tough and steady—a solid, measured response.”
“You said exactly what needed to be said,” Salinger chimed in.
“Well, that’s it then, unless the son of a bitch fouls it up,” JFK said, holding up a hand to brace himself against the frame as he passed through the office door.
Secret Service agent Bob Morris reached out to open the next door, and the President nodded his thanks as he passed through. Morris fell in behind the Chief Executive as he moved toward the elevator.
“I’m going to look in on Jackie and the kids,” Jack announced, finally leaving his brother and his press secretary behind. The Secret Service agent followed him to the elevator but stopped outside the car.
“Good night, Mr. President,” he said.
“Good night, Bob. And thanks,” JFK said wearily, before the door closed and the elevator carried him up to the Residence, where his wife and two children were waiting.
* * *
The sound room resembled a closet, wedged into a small space between the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. Though the speech had ended several minutes earlier, two reels of tape still rolled, steadily spooling duplicate copies of dead air. Finally, Ron Pickett reached out and turned the knobs, shutting the recorders down.
He was sweating, slightly. Even though the speech had been broadcast on all the networks and was recorded by countless agencies both official and private, he felt the burden of making sure that his recordings were perfect. The taping machines that almost filled this small room would provide the official documentation of the President’s speech. Perhaps nobody would ever know about them, or hear them, but even so Rickett felt the pressure of that responsibility like a physical weight.
It was a weight he bore willingly, even eagerly, because he could do it so well. Now he checked the needles, reassured that they all rested at “0,” accurately indicating that there was no sound reaching the microphones in the Presidential office. The needles monitoring the mics in the conference room flickered slightly, and Pickett knew that the cleaning crew was in there, quietly dusting, moving the chairs around. A vacuum cleaner suddenly started to whine, and the needles flickered upward.
Good. All was as it should be. Pickett boxed up the two duplicate tapes of the speech, labeled each in his precise, neatly blocked hand, and placed them on the shelf next to the tapes of all that month’s eventful discussion. History had been made, was still being made, in this building, across the city, the nation, and the world—but that reality was far from his mind.
Instead, as he left the room, closed the door, and locked it under the watchful eyes of Secret Service agent Morris, Ron Pickett merely felt the calm satisfaction of a job well done.
2300 hours
Soviet Submarine B-59, Submerged
1300 miles NE of Cuba, Atlantic Ocean
The vast, rolling expanse of black ocean waters parted suddenly, churning into froth as a metallic prow and sleek, tapered sail emerged from the sea to glisten in the night air. Waves spilled to port and starboard as the rest of the boat broke the surface. Immediately the three diesel engines chugged into life, propelled the submarine even as they spun additional energy into the dynamos that began to reenergize the exhausted batteries.
Captain (2nd Rank) Valentin Savitsky, as usual, was the first one up through the hatch into the small observation platform atop the sail. He couldn’t see stars through the overcast skies above, but at least the ocean surface was reasonably calm. The long, narrow deck below him remained above the waves, and he immediately opened the speaking tube and addressed his executive officer, in the command compartment directly below.
“Send the men up to the surface in shifts. Every man gets thirty minutes of fresh air. We will submerge as soon as the batteries are recharged.”
“Da, captain,” replied Commander Vasily Arkhipov, gratitude in his voice.
Indeed, that gratitude would soon permeate the entire boat, Savitsky knew. The submarine, a diesel-powered boat of the Foxtrot class, had been designed for the defense of the Soviet coasts and nearby ocean waters. It was a fairly reliable vessel, only four years old, but the design lacked several features of more modern submarines—in fact, except for the fact that it was larger, the Foxtrots were not very different from late WW2-era German U-boats.
And they had never been intended for a mission like this. Savitsky and his crew had been at sea for more than three weeks, running submerged except when they needed to surface to recharge the sub’s powerful batteries by running the diesel engines—and then only in the dead of night. They had already crossed some ten thousand miles of ocean, venturing farther from Mother Russia than any Soviet submarine had ever done before. And for weeks, now, the problems had been mounting.
The submarine was one of four Foxtrots dispatched toward Cuba as part of Operation Anadyr, but Savitsky had no means of communicating directly with the other boats. Contact and orders from Soviet Naval headquarters, in Murmansk, was spotty, with a few long-range instructions reaching the submarine when it was on the surface. But those orders had contained precious little information, and absolutely nothing about the rest of the submarines, or anything else involving Cuba or the Americans. And constrained by the need for radio silence, Savitsky had been unable to send any reports back to the USSR, or to any other Soviet Bloc ships at sea. Secrecy in this mission was paramount: the Americans were not to have any clue that the Soviet navy was venturing into the western Atlantic Ocean.
He and his crew existed in their own little claustrophobic universe, and it was a universe growing more uninhabitable by the day. Forty-eight hours ago the boat’s ventilation system had failed, and nothing the crew had done had been able to get the central fan unit to operate again. The captain suspected that the culprit was the high humidity, a corrosive effect of the steamy air caused by the warmth of these tropical waters. To compensate, they kept the hatches open between compartments, but even so the temperature in the boat was running at a steady 110 degrees Fahrenheit. In the engine room, where the diesel’s were not cooling properly, it was even worse, ranging 20 or 30 degrees warmer than the rest of the boat—a virtual oven.
And the air quality was going from bad to worse. Carbon dioxide concentrations had risen to dangerous levels, and it was not uncommon for one or more of Savitsky’s sailors to faint at his post. The diesel coolers had become completely inoperative, probably clogged with salt, so the overheating engines continued to raise the temperature in the hull. The only respite from the poisonous air were these precious minutes atop the water, concealed only by the cloak of darkness.
The previous night they had surfaced into stormy seas. The B-59 had churned along, charging her batteries, but the thunderous waves sweeping over the deck had prevented the captain from allowing any of his crewmen to come up for a breath of fresh air. So they had sweltered and gasped through another day.
Wiping the spray from his forehead with an oily rag, the captain looked down to the foredeck, where sailors were already emerging from the forward hatch, stretching and breathing deeply as they escaped the stale air inside the hull.
“Captain?” Arkhipov’s voice echoed in the speaking tube.
“What is it, Vasily Andreivich?”
“Feklisov, sir. He asks for permission to forego his deck time. He doesn’t want to leave his baby.”
Savitsky uttered a bark of laughter. “Permission granted,” he said.
He thought of Lt. Commander Anatoly Feklisov and his charge, which was the one piece of modern equipment on this old-fashioned boat. The “baby” was a very special weapon, a type 53-58 torpedo. Like the other twenty-one torpedoes of B-59’s weapon complement, it was capable of running for more than six miles under the ocean while it sought the metal hull of an enemy ship. It could be pre-set before launch to curve through an arc, to climb or to dive, as it sought a target. Unlike the other torpedoes, however, it was not equipped with a standard TNT-explosive warhead. Instead, Feklisov’s torpedo was capped by the RDS-9 warhead, a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb. The weapon was nearly as powerful as the one the Americans had dropped on Hiroshima during WW2. It was this torpedo that made the B-59 a truly powerful ship of war. Feksilov would do well to keep a close eye on that device.
An hour later, again below decks, the captain made his way to the forward torpedo room, where he found the lieutenant commander, as usual, stationed right beside the nuclear-armed torpedo, encased as it was in its shiny gray tube. Eleven of the submarine’s twelve torpedo tubes were loaded with conventional weapons, but the twelfth tube was empty, merely waiting for this lethal device to be activated and slipped into firing position. Once that had been done, a process that took only about five minutes, the B-59 could unleash hell against any American warship, or even devastate a small fleet.
“How fares the boat, Comrade Captain?” asked the bookish younger officer. Lieutenant Commander Anatoly Feklisov was not so much a sailor as an engineer, in the captain’s eyes. It was his job to tend the nuclear warhead, to maintain it, and to make sure that it would work if Savitsky ever ordered it to be fired. But the captain liked and trusted the young man, who sometimes seemed scarcely older than a boy.
“Not so good, Anatoly Yakovlivich,” Savitsky replied glumly. “The air is shit, and getting shittier.” He looked at the sleek gray container next to Feklisov, and thought about the power there. “But at least we can kick the Americans in the ass if they try to give us any trouble, eh?” he added, forcing a laugh.
“That we can, Captain. That we can,” Feklisov agreed.
Meanwhile, the temperature in the engine room continued to climb, and the air grew even more stale, heavy with CO2. The duty engineer, feeling dizzy, had to step forward for a moment, to get a few breaths of the comparably “fresh” air from the command compartment in the middle of the boat. He didn’t hear the noise, only a small snap really, that emanated from the rear of the engine room.
There, in the very farthest aft part of the boat, a tired roller bearing had been turning relentlessly for more than three weeks, cradling the steady rotation of the starboard propeller shaft. Now, suddenly, a tiny fatigue crack broke the perfect seal where the shaft passed through the outer hull of the submarine. Unseen and unsensed by any crewmember, the crack was so small that only the tiniest trickle of water, at first, could force its way into the boat.
One: Operation Anadyr
“What if we throw a hedgehog down Uncle Sam’s pants?”
Communist Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev
Last edited:
JSmith
Banned
Looks like the book is only in Polish at this point
Pakt Ribbentrop Beck [Paperback]
Piotr Zychowicz (Author)
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Available from these sellers.
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Book Description
Publication Date: 2012
W dziejach narodow sa chwile, gdy trzeba zacisnac zeby i isc na bolesne koncesje. Ustapic, aby ratowac panstwo przed zniszczeniem, a obywateli przed zaglada. W takiej sytuacji znalazla sie Polska w 1939 roku. Piotr Zychowicz konsekwentnie dowodzi w tej ksiazce, ze decyzja o przystapieniu do wojny z Niemcami w iluzorycznym sojuszu z Wielka Brytania i Francja byla fatalnym bledem, za ktory zaplacilismy straszliwa cene. Historia mogla sie jednak potoczyc inaczej. Zamiast porywac sie z motyka na slonce, twierdzi autor, powinnismy byli prowadzic Realpolitik. Ustapic Hitlerowi i zgodzic sie na wlaczenie Gdanska do Rzeszy oraz wytyczenie eksterytorialnej autostrady przez Pomorze. A nastepnie razem z Niemcami wziac udzial w ataku na Zwiazek Sowiecki. 40 bitnych polskich dywizji na froncie wschodnim przypieczetowaloby los imperium Stalina. Czy w 1939 roku na Zamku Krolewskim w Warszawie nalezalo podpisac pakt Ribbentrop-Beck...?
So below is the wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pact_Ribbentrop_-_Beck_(novel)
Pact Ribbentrop - Beck (novel)
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Pact Ribbentrop - Beck (Polish: Pakt Ribbentrop - Beck) is an alternative history novel by a Polish writer and historian Piotr Zychowicz. The book, whose full title is Pact Ribbentrop - Beck, or How Poles could have defeated the Soviet Union alongside the Third Reich (Polish: Pakt Ribbentrop - Beck czyli jak Polacy mogli u boku III Rzeszy pokonać Związek Radziecki), was published in 2012 by Dom Wydawniczy Rebis from Poznań. The author argues that the government of the Second Polish Republic should have accepted Adolf Hitler's offer of a joint Polish - German attack on the Soviet Union, together capturing Moscow. As Piotr Zychowicz stated in a November 2012 interview: "This book is my answer to the question that all Poles ask. And the question is: did we have to bungle up World War Two so badly? Did we have to lose half of our territory, together with Wilno and Lwów? Did we have to lose our elites, which were slaughtered? Did we have to lose millions of our citizens, murdered by totalitarian occupiers, the Germans and the Soviets? Did we have to lose our independence for 50 years? The answer to these questions is politically incorrect, because Poland was not doomed to fail. And the answer is included in my book, in which I write that history could have been different".[1]
The webpage of the book states the following: "In the history of nations there are moments when one has to bite the bullet and allow for painful concessions. To give up in order to save the nation from destruction, and its citizens from slaughter. This was the situation of Poland in 1939. Piotr Zychowicz claims in his book that the decision to enter the war against Nazi Germany in an illusive alliance with France and Great Britain, was a grave mistake, for which we paid a horrible price. History could have turned in a different way. Instead of biting off more than we could chew, we should have used realpolitik. We should have made concessions to Hitler, and agreed for annexation of the Free City of Danzig into the Third Reich, as well as for the construction of an extraterritorial highway across the Polish Corridor. And then, together with the Germans, we should have attacked the Soviet Union. Forty valiant divisions of the Polish Army, fighting on the Eastern Front would have sealed the fate of Stalin's empire".[2]
The book was met with mixed opinions among Polish historians. Professor Andrzej Nowak called it "harmful and unwise", adding that it "fulfills the wish of Russian and other propagandists, who claim that Poland dreamed of joining Hitler to murder Jews, but did not do it because of her own stupidity".[3] Adam Stohnij of the military portal www.1939.pl calles the book a "military Blitzkrieg", writing that Zychowicz "comes up with a daring argument. In the situation that Poland found itself right before the war, the only chance to survive was an alliance with the Third Reich".[4] Piotr A. Maciążek, a publicist of portal politykawschodnia.pl calls the book "a Polish Icebreaker", writing that Pakt Ribbentrop - Beck is "undoubtedly one of the most interesting and controversial books, published in Poland in 2012. A heated discussion that ensued after its publication shows that this book was much needed".[5]
In the book, Zychowicz quotes a number of historians and publicists, such as Paweł Wieczorkiewicz, Andrzej Wielowieyski, Adolf Bocheński, Stanisław Mackiewicz, Władysław Studnicki, Jerzy Łojek, Grzegorz Górski, Rafał Ziemkiewicz, Stanisław Żerko, Mieczysław Pruszyński, Stanisław Swianiewicz. He also provides citations from memoirs of such persons, as Władysław Anders, Józef Beck, Jan Szembek, Juliusz Łukasiewicz, Clara Petacci, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Edward Raczyński, August Zaleski.
Contents
[hide]
Plot summary[edit]
The author writes that if Poland had not opposed Adolf Hitler in September 1939, World War Two would have started on April 9, 1940, with a German attack on Western Europe. After capturing Paris, and defeating Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and France, on June 21, 1941, the Wehrmacht, together with the Polish Army, attacked the Soviet Union. In the winter of 1941/42, Soviet Empire ceases to exist. Poland and Germany divide its territory, but soon afterwards, mutual relationships deteriorate. At the same time, Germany keeps fighting Great Britain, and its American ally. This war is costly, and by 1944, all main units of the Wehrmacht are in Western Europe, fighting the Anglo-Saxons, who had landed in France in summer 1944. In those circumstances, Warsaw begins secret negotiations with London and Washington, eventually switching sides, and attacking the Third Reich in 1945. As Zychowicz writes: "At this point, Poland should have acted like Romania and Hungary in late stages of World War Two. Noticing German problems in the West, both countries initiated secret negotiations with the Allies. The British and the Americans gladly accepted the offer, understanding that it would weaken the potential of the Axis powers". (page 82)
Finally, when the Third Reich prepares for a decisive battle in the West, Polish Army invades Germany. Surprised Wehrmacht does not fight the Poles, who capture Silesia, Eastern Prussia, and Western Pomerania, cutting off all lines of communication with German units which had remained in occupied Soviet Union. In August 1945, Western Allies capture Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide, while Polish armored divisions clear Baltic States. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia join the federation of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine: "The dream of Marshall Józef Piłsudski has become reality. Poland emerges as a great power. During a peace conference, which takes place at Polish Baltic Sea spa of Jurata, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Edward Śmigły-Rydz discuss the future of Europe". (pages 22 - 23)
Pakt Ribbentrop Beck [Paperback]
Piotr Zychowicz (Author)
Be the first to review this item
Available from these sellers.
1 new from $41.57
Book Description
Publication Date: 2012
W dziejach narodow sa chwile, gdy trzeba zacisnac zeby i isc na bolesne koncesje. Ustapic, aby ratowac panstwo przed zniszczeniem, a obywateli przed zaglada. W takiej sytuacji znalazla sie Polska w 1939 roku. Piotr Zychowicz konsekwentnie dowodzi w tej ksiazce, ze decyzja o przystapieniu do wojny z Niemcami w iluzorycznym sojuszu z Wielka Brytania i Francja byla fatalnym bledem, za ktory zaplacilismy straszliwa cene. Historia mogla sie jednak potoczyc inaczej. Zamiast porywac sie z motyka na slonce, twierdzi autor, powinnismy byli prowadzic Realpolitik. Ustapic Hitlerowi i zgodzic sie na wlaczenie Gdanska do Rzeszy oraz wytyczenie eksterytorialnej autostrady przez Pomorze. A nastepnie razem z Niemcami wziac udzial w ataku na Zwiazek Sowiecki. 40 bitnych polskich dywizji na froncie wschodnim przypieczetowaloby los imperium Stalina. Czy w 1939 roku na Zamku Krolewskim w Warszawie nalezalo podpisac pakt Ribbentrop-Beck...?
So below is the wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pact_Ribbentrop_-_Beck_(novel)
Pact Ribbentrop - Beck (novel)
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Pact Ribbentrop - Beck (Polish: Pakt Ribbentrop - Beck) is an alternative history novel by a Polish writer and historian Piotr Zychowicz. The book, whose full title is Pact Ribbentrop - Beck, or How Poles could have defeated the Soviet Union alongside the Third Reich (Polish: Pakt Ribbentrop - Beck czyli jak Polacy mogli u boku III Rzeszy pokonać Związek Radziecki), was published in 2012 by Dom Wydawniczy Rebis from Poznań. The author argues that the government of the Second Polish Republic should have accepted Adolf Hitler's offer of a joint Polish - German attack on the Soviet Union, together capturing Moscow. As Piotr Zychowicz stated in a November 2012 interview: "This book is my answer to the question that all Poles ask. And the question is: did we have to bungle up World War Two so badly? Did we have to lose half of our territory, together with Wilno and Lwów? Did we have to lose our elites, which were slaughtered? Did we have to lose millions of our citizens, murdered by totalitarian occupiers, the Germans and the Soviets? Did we have to lose our independence for 50 years? The answer to these questions is politically incorrect, because Poland was not doomed to fail. And the answer is included in my book, in which I write that history could have been different".[1]
The webpage of the book states the following: "In the history of nations there are moments when one has to bite the bullet and allow for painful concessions. To give up in order to save the nation from destruction, and its citizens from slaughter. This was the situation of Poland in 1939. Piotr Zychowicz claims in his book that the decision to enter the war against Nazi Germany in an illusive alliance with France and Great Britain, was a grave mistake, for which we paid a horrible price. History could have turned in a different way. Instead of biting off more than we could chew, we should have used realpolitik. We should have made concessions to Hitler, and agreed for annexation of the Free City of Danzig into the Third Reich, as well as for the construction of an extraterritorial highway across the Polish Corridor. And then, together with the Germans, we should have attacked the Soviet Union. Forty valiant divisions of the Polish Army, fighting on the Eastern Front would have sealed the fate of Stalin's empire".[2]
The book was met with mixed opinions among Polish historians. Professor Andrzej Nowak called it "harmful and unwise", adding that it "fulfills the wish of Russian and other propagandists, who claim that Poland dreamed of joining Hitler to murder Jews, but did not do it because of her own stupidity".[3] Adam Stohnij of the military portal www.1939.pl calles the book a "military Blitzkrieg", writing that Zychowicz "comes up with a daring argument. In the situation that Poland found itself right before the war, the only chance to survive was an alliance with the Third Reich".[4] Piotr A. Maciążek, a publicist of portal politykawschodnia.pl calls the book "a Polish Icebreaker", writing that Pakt Ribbentrop - Beck is "undoubtedly one of the most interesting and controversial books, published in Poland in 2012. A heated discussion that ensued after its publication shows that this book was much needed".[5]
In the book, Zychowicz quotes a number of historians and publicists, such as Paweł Wieczorkiewicz, Andrzej Wielowieyski, Adolf Bocheński, Stanisław Mackiewicz, Władysław Studnicki, Jerzy Łojek, Grzegorz Górski, Rafał Ziemkiewicz, Stanisław Żerko, Mieczysław Pruszyński, Stanisław Swianiewicz. He also provides citations from memoirs of such persons, as Władysław Anders, Józef Beck, Jan Szembek, Juliusz Łukasiewicz, Clara Petacci, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Edward Raczyński, August Zaleski.
Contents
[hide]
Plot summary[edit]
The author writes that if Poland had not opposed Adolf Hitler in September 1939, World War Two would have started on April 9, 1940, with a German attack on Western Europe. After capturing Paris, and defeating Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and France, on June 21, 1941, the Wehrmacht, together with the Polish Army, attacked the Soviet Union. In the winter of 1941/42, Soviet Empire ceases to exist. Poland and Germany divide its territory, but soon afterwards, mutual relationships deteriorate. At the same time, Germany keeps fighting Great Britain, and its American ally. This war is costly, and by 1944, all main units of the Wehrmacht are in Western Europe, fighting the Anglo-Saxons, who had landed in France in summer 1944. In those circumstances, Warsaw begins secret negotiations with London and Washington, eventually switching sides, and attacking the Third Reich in 1945. As Zychowicz writes: "At this point, Poland should have acted like Romania and Hungary in late stages of World War Two. Noticing German problems in the West, both countries initiated secret negotiations with the Allies. The British and the Americans gladly accepted the offer, understanding that it would weaken the potential of the Axis powers". (page 82)
Finally, when the Third Reich prepares for a decisive battle in the West, Polish Army invades Germany. Surprised Wehrmacht does not fight the Poles, who capture Silesia, Eastern Prussia, and Western Pomerania, cutting off all lines of communication with German units which had remained in occupied Soviet Union. In August 1945, Western Allies capture Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide, while Polish armored divisions clear Baltic States. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia join the federation of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine: "The dream of Marshall Józef Piłsudski has become reality. Poland emerges as a great power. During a peace conference, which takes place at Polish Baltic Sea spa of Jurata, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Edward Śmigły-Rydz discuss the future of Europe". (pages 22 - 23)
JSmith
Banned
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Nat...tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1372790429&sr=8-1
Christian Nation: A Novel(Kindle Edition)
by Frederic C. Rich
(11)
Kindle Edition
$15.31
Deliver To
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Afterword
incerity becomes apparent. From being apparent, it becomes manifest. From being manifest, it becomes brilliant. Brilliant, it affects others. Affecting others, they are changed by it. Changed by it, they are transformed. It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can transform.
Christian Nation: A Novel(Kindle Edition)by Frederic C. Rich
(11)Kindle Edition
$15.31
Deliver To
CHRISTIAN NATION
— A Novel —
FREDERIC C. RICH
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Afterword
Acknowledgments
THIS NOVEL IS a work of speculative fiction. The speculation is about one possible course of American history had the McCain/Palin campaign won the 2008 election. Except for certain historical events and statements by public figures prior to election night 2008, the narrative is entirely fictional. Accordingly, all statements and actions of actual public figures and organizations following election night 2008 are the product of the author’s imagination; the appearance of such statements and actions in a work of fiction does not constitute an assertion that such person or entity would speak or act in that way in those circumstances.
In contrast to the actual public figures and organizations appearing in the novel, the other characters and organizations are purely fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual organizations, is entirely coincidental. As Evelyn Waugh put it so well, “I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they.”
THIS NOVEL IS a work of speculative fiction. The speculation is about one possible course of American history had the McCain/Palin campaign won the 2008 election. Except for certain historical events and statements by public figures prior to election night 2008, the narrative is entirely fictional. Accordingly, all statements and actions of actual public figures and organizations following election night 2008 are the product of the author’s imagination; the appearance of such statements and actions in a work of fiction does not constitute an assertion that such person or entity would speak or act in that way in those circumstances.
In contrast to the actual public figures and organizations appearing in the novel, the other characters and organizations are purely fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual organizations, is entirely coincidental. As Evelyn Waugh put it so well, “I am not I: thou art not he or she: they are not they.”
Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. For as knowledge grows or alters continually, it clashes with mythology and theology, which change with geological leisureliness.
—Will and Ariel Durant,
The Story of Civilization
2029
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
—Milan Kundera,
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
[W]ould-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones.
—Hannah Arendt,
ADAM TOLD ME TO START by writing about what I feel now. Sitting here, I don’t feel much except the faint phantom ache of a wound long since healed. It was only six weeks ago that I met Adam Brown. He and his wife, Sarah, are downstairs asleep. In front of me is a beige IBM Selectric II typewriter, disconnected and without memory, immune from the insatiable probings of the Purity Web, and thus the ultimate contraband. A man I hardly know has seated me in front of a typewriter and told me to remember and write. I’ve spent a long time staring at the egg-like ball of little letters wondering why I am here and what they really want from me.
Here are the facts. I was a lawyer and then a fighter for the secular side in the Holy War that ended in 2020 following the siege of Manhattan. Like so many others, I earned my release from three years of rehabilitation on Governors Island by accepting Jesus Christ as my savior. For the past five years I have lived as a free citizen of the Christian Nation. This is the only truth I have allowed myself. Can I really now think and write the words that express a different truth? Here they are then: I am no longer chained in my cell, but for five years I have been bound even more firmly by the fifty commandments of The Blessing and the suffocating surveillance of the Purity Web. The cloak of collective righteousness lies heavy on the land.
Before coming here, I did not ask myself how it happened. I have neither remembered nor grieved. But now I discover that recollection is there, a paper’s edge from consciousness. When I close my eyes I find flickers of memory: Emilie’s empty martini glass on our terrace, drinking in the sun, the day after we broke up. And I remember looking at the hard empty glass and remembering her skin soft and warm and full of the same sun only the day before. Hard and soft. Stone and skin. Memories flicker and stutter, old film freezing in the projector, slipping, lurching forward. Dissolving.
Before, I was a lawyer. I was good with words. I was organized. I was not, frankly, much interested in my feelings, although I was pretty good at telling a story. A story should start at the beginning, but exactly where this one began is still a mystery to me.
What is clear to me is that they did what they said they would do. This morning, Adam pulled from the wall of old-fashioned gray metal file cabinets a tattered manila folder marked “2006” filled with clippings. In the folder I found a small glossy pamphlet from a group promoting “Christian Political Action.” An affable-looking man stares back at me from the cover. Inside is a letter dated November 2006, just a year after I started at the law firm.
They promised, in 2006, that if they succeeded in acquiring political power, “the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.” In 2006 I was a first-year associate at the law firm. I try to remember. Had I ever heard of Rushdoony, North, Coe, Dobson, Perkins, or Farris? Did I know anything about Brownback, Palin, Bachmann, DeMint, Santorum, Coburn, or Perry? I do remember watching maudlin confessions of adultery from buffoonish TV preachers, stoic big-haired wives at their sides. I knew vaguely that out there somewhere in America, in an America that was to me a dimly understood foreign land, there existed people—lots of people—who called themselves “born again” or “evangelical.” I wonder what I thought that meant. Something ridiculous about believers flying up to heaven in a longed-for event called “the rapture,” leaving behind those not saved to endure the tribulations of the apocalypse. But I do remember being surprised when a banker client told me that the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels and films had a US audience not so far behind that of the Harry Potter franchise. Both were fantastic stories of magic and miracles—one benign and one that proved to be an early symptom of something far darker.
It was 2009, I think, after President McCain’s sudden death, that my best friend, Sanjay, first explained to me that behind the public face of the Christian right was a strange mix of fundamentalist theologies, all different and often at odds with one another but aligned in supporting the election of politicians who believe they speak to and for God, aligned in seeking to have their religiously based morals adopted into law, and aligned in rejecting the traditional notion of a “wall of separation” between church and state. Of these fundamentalist theologies, the most extreme, and in many ways most influential, were dominionism and reconstructionism.
“Dominionism,” Sanjay explained, “holds that Christians need to establish a Christian reign on earth before Jesus returns for the second coming. Dominionists also believe that Christians in general have a God-given right to rule, but more particularly, in preparation for the second coming of Christ, that Christians have the responsibility to take over every aspect of political and civil society. And dominionism is often associated with a fringe theology called reconstructionism, which emphasizes that this reconstructed Christian-led society should be governed strictly accordingly to biblical law.”
How bored we were at first with Sanjay’s preoccupation with this dark strain of American belief. I didn’t know, and Sanjay only later discovered, that this dominionist outlook had influenced not only the Wasilla Assembly of God, the Pentecostal church attended by Sarah Palin in Alaska, but many thousands of others around the country. What had once been a fringe of exotic beliefs and schismatic sects had entered the religious mainstream in America.
Before the start of the Holy War, I delivered dozens of speeches warning of the political ambitions of the fundamentalists. Most of the time, I illustrated the meaning of dominionism with a single quote from a prominent evangelical “educator” from Tennessee, George Grant. I still remember it:
“It is serious,” he said, leaning forward. “What I am telling you, Greg, is that when they speak of turning America into a Christian Nation ruled in accordance with the Bible by those who purport to speak for God, this is not just rhetoric. It needs to be taken at face value. Right now, tens of millions of your fellow citizens believe—fanatically believe—there is nothing more important, and have been working for decades to acquire the political power to make it happen.”
“San,” my girlfriend Emilie replied, “I love you dearly,” which was not exactly true, “but on this you’re seriously off base. We’ve always had big religious revivals. Think of the Great Awakening. It’s just mass hysteria—it flares up when people feel anxious about change, and then it burns out. And the evangelicals are, what, only a quarter of the population? Fact is, most of the people are drugged out on shopping and reality TV and couldn’t give a crap. It’s just not going to happen, San.”
I agreed with her.
THE TYPEWRITER SITS on a table directly in front of a large picture window that frames a view of three overgrown rhododendrons in the foreground, the narrow lake below, and the rocky shore opposite, dominated by a single large gray-green granite boulder. A dense oak forest punctuated with tall hemlocks rises sharply behind it. The lake is flat, so free of ripple or blemish that every cloud is rendered perfectly on its surface. I hear no sound other than the unfamiliar mechanical hum of the typewriter, in which—I suddenly hear—the dominant note is G, with strong overtones. Secular music has been missing from my life since the end of the Holy War. All we had at Governors Island were Church of God in America hymns, which were so insipid as to kill the joy that I normally found in any music. I listen to the hum of the IBM. It isn’t Bach, but it isn’t Walk with Jesus Mild either. I hum a fifth interval, over and over, harmonizing with the IBM, then stop when I suddenly remember the face of the redheaded kid I killed with a grenade. He ran at my position in Battery Park, alone, screaming, his face twisted in hate. I couldn’t hear him, but his mouth suggested, “Die faggot.” They called everyone left in Manhattan “faggot.” He exploded in a fine red mist.
This was not the first time that the world didn’t listen. In college I read Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Fourteen years before the first shot was fired, Hitler announced his plan to destroy the parliamentary system in Germany, to attack France and Eastern Europe, and to eliminate the Jews. Why, I asked the professor, did neither ordinary Germans voting in the Reichstag elections in July 1932, nor foreign leaders reacting to the rise of Nazism, believe him? Why was anyone surprised when he simply did what he said he would do? She had no answer.
The fall of my senior year at Princeton, nineteen deeply religious young men flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. During the decade before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden had shouted out his warnings of mass murder using all the means of modern communication. And still we were surprised when he did what he said he would do.
So I suppose what happened here is that they said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.
The Origins of Totalitarianism
ADAM TOLD ME TO START by writing about what I feel now. Sitting here, I don’t feel much except the faint phantom ache of a wound long since healed. It was only six weeks ago that I met Adam Brown. He and his wife, Sarah, are downstairs asleep. In front of me is a beige IBM Selectric II typewriter, disconnected and without memory, immune from the insatiable probings of the Purity Web, and thus the ultimate contraband. A man I hardly know has seated me in front of a typewriter and told me to remember and write. I’ve spent a long time staring at the egg-like ball of little letters wondering why I am here and what they really want from me.
Here are the facts. I was a lawyer and then a fighter for the secular side in the Holy War that ended in 2020 following the siege of Manhattan. Like so many others, I earned my release from three years of rehabilitation on Governors Island by accepting Jesus Christ as my savior. For the past five years I have lived as a free citizen of the Christian Nation. This is the only truth I have allowed myself. Can I really now think and write the words that express a different truth? Here they are then: I am no longer chained in my cell, but for five years I have been bound even more firmly by the fifty commandments of The Blessing and the suffocating surveillance of the Purity Web. The cloak of collective righteousness lies heavy on the land.
Before coming here, I did not ask myself how it happened. I have neither remembered nor grieved. But now I discover that recollection is there, a paper’s edge from consciousness. When I close my eyes I find flickers of memory: Emilie’s empty martini glass on our terrace, drinking in the sun, the day after we broke up. And I remember looking at the hard empty glass and remembering her skin soft and warm and full of the same sun only the day before. Hard and soft. Stone and skin. Memories flicker and stutter, old film freezing in the projector, slipping, lurching forward. Dissolving.
Before, I was a lawyer. I was good with words. I was organized. I was not, frankly, much interested in my feelings, although I was pretty good at telling a story. A story should start at the beginning, but exactly where this one began is still a mystery to me.
What is clear to me is that they did what they said they would do. This morning, Adam pulled from the wall of old-fashioned gray metal file cabinets a tattered manila folder marked “2006” filled with clippings. In the folder I found a small glossy pamphlet from a group promoting “Christian Political Action.” An affable-looking man stares back at me from the cover. Inside is a letter dated November 2006, just a year after I started at the law firm.
When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil, and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.
That certainly is clear. I have read this little brochure over and over, trying to remember when I first heard this message, this promise. Was I listening? I was twenty-five in 2006. I was not very good at listening at that age, at least to things I didn’t want to hear. But what about the people who should have been listening? My parents, for example. I try to imagine my father picking up this brochure from the table in the foyer of our little wooden Catholic church in Madison, New Jersey. What would he have thought when reading these words? Closing my eyes, I can see him, still sandy haired at fifty, his athletic frame softened by scotch and a desk job. A decent man, reading a letter from a fellow Christian threatening to remake his world. He would have looked up, a shadow crossing his handsome face, then thrown the brochure in the little box where people neatly discarded the copies of hymn lyrics. He would have gone to play golf.
They promised, in 2006, that if they succeeded in acquiring political power, “the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.” In 2006 I was a first-year associate at the law firm. I try to remember. Had I ever heard of Rushdoony, North, Coe, Dobson, Perkins, or Farris? Did I know anything about Brownback, Palin, Bachmann, DeMint, Santorum, Coburn, or Perry? I do remember watching maudlin confessions of adultery from buffoonish TV preachers, stoic big-haired wives at their sides. I knew vaguely that out there somewhere in America, in an America that was to me a dimly understood foreign land, there existed people—lots of people—who called themselves “born again” or “evangelical.” I wonder what I thought that meant. Something ridiculous about believers flying up to heaven in a longed-for event called “the rapture,” leaving behind those not saved to endure the tribulations of the apocalypse. But I do remember being surprised when a banker client told me that the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels and films had a US audience not so far behind that of the Harry Potter franchise. Both were fantastic stories of magic and miracles—one benign and one that proved to be an early symptom of something far darker.
It was 2009, I think, after President McCain’s sudden death, that my best friend, Sanjay, first explained to me that behind the public face of the Christian right was a strange mix of fundamentalist theologies, all different and often at odds with one another but aligned in supporting the election of politicians who believe they speak to and for God, aligned in seeking to have their religiously based morals adopted into law, and aligned in rejecting the traditional notion of a “wall of separation” between church and state. Of these fundamentalist theologies, the most extreme, and in many ways most influential, were dominionism and reconstructionism.
“Dominionism,” Sanjay explained, “holds that Christians need to establish a Christian reign on earth before Jesus returns for the second coming. Dominionists also believe that Christians in general have a God-given right to rule, but more particularly, in preparation for the second coming of Christ, that Christians have the responsibility to take over every aspect of political and civil society. And dominionism is often associated with a fringe theology called reconstructionism, which emphasizes that this reconstructed Christian-led society should be governed strictly accordingly to biblical law.”
How bored we were at first with Sanjay’s preoccupation with this dark strain of American belief. I didn’t know, and Sanjay only later discovered, that this dominionist outlook had influenced not only the Wasilla Assembly of God, the Pentecostal church attended by Sarah Palin in Alaska, but many thousands of others around the country. What had once been a fringe of exotic beliefs and schismatic sects had entered the religious mainstream in America.
Before the start of the Holy War, I delivered dozens of speeches warning of the political ambitions of the fundamentalists. Most of the time, I illustrated the meaning of dominionism with a single quote from a prominent evangelical “educator” from Tennessee, George Grant. I still remember it:
Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ—to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and Godliness. But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after…. Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land—of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ.
Of course, it was only later that I made those speeches. After I made my choice. Before, for many years, I just couldn’t take it seriously. Closing my eyes again, I can hear Sanjay’s voice at a dinner at the East Side apartment I then shared with my girlfriend Emilie.
“It is serious,” he said, leaning forward. “What I am telling you, Greg, is that when they speak of turning America into a Christian Nation ruled in accordance with the Bible by those who purport to speak for God, this is not just rhetoric. It needs to be taken at face value. Right now, tens of millions of your fellow citizens believe—fanatically believe—there is nothing more important, and have been working for decades to acquire the political power to make it happen.”
“San,” my girlfriend Emilie replied, “I love you dearly,” which was not exactly true, “but on this you’re seriously off base. We’ve always had big religious revivals. Think of the Great Awakening. It’s just mass hysteria—it flares up when people feel anxious about change, and then it burns out. And the evangelicals are, what, only a quarter of the population? Fact is, most of the people are drugged out on shopping and reality TV and couldn’t give a crap. It’s just not going to happen, San.”
I agreed with her.
This was not the first time that the world didn’t listen. In college I read Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Fourteen years before the first shot was fired, Hitler announced his plan to destroy the parliamentary system in Germany, to attack France and Eastern Europe, and to eliminate the Jews. Why, I asked the professor, did neither ordinary Germans voting in the Reichstag elections in July 1932, nor foreign leaders reacting to the rise of Nazism, believe him? Why was anyone surprised when he simply did what he said he would do? She had no answer.
The fall of my senior year at Princeton, nineteen deeply religious young men flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. During the decade before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden had shouted out his warnings of mass murder using all the means of modern communication. And still we were surprised when he did what he said he would do.
So I suppose what happened here is that they said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.
2029
An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin…. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? … And suddenly the memory revealed itself.
—Marcel Proust,
SITTING HERE OVERLOOKING INDIAN LAKE, it feels strange to be outside New York City for the first time in ten years. For the past five years, I have worked at the Christian Nation Archives in New York, in what formerly was the Bobst Library of New York University. The old libraries are closed, of course, but not all the collections have been destroyed. As “indexers,” we are charged with the task of coding the remaining books for preservation or destruction, and occasionally retrieving books requested by public officials or scholars whose research has been sanctioned by the Church of God in America, universally referred to as COGA. All academic and cultural organizations operate under the supervision of COGA, a sprawling enterprise. Most of us from Governors Island were placed with COGA-affiliated employers, which allows them to keep a close eye on our progress. GI has faith in its graduates, but even for them there are limits to faith. I find the physical presence of the books to be a comfort. We are constantly reminded that the eradication of evil is vital work entrusted only to those of us who know Christ and thus have the fortitude for the task.
Six months ago, a new indexer named Adam settled in to work at a table two rows behind mine. He is the only African American in our group, and his rimless glasses, tweedy garb, and strong vocabulary immediately suggested to me that he had been a scholar. For the first two weeks he ignored me, nearly to the point of rudeness. Then, during his third week, seeing that I was heading to Washington Square Park for lunch, Adam casually asked if he could join me. He chose a remote bench facing a dense stand of shrubs. He asked lots of questions about work and dodged most of my questions about him. When we finished our sandwiches and rose from the bench, he glanced to see that no one was near and then said simply, “Greg, you need to know that I am here because of you.” Before I could respond, he shook my hand, giving it that distinctive extra squeeze I had felt from a few others, and then turned to walk back to the library by himself.
Two weeks later, Adam and I had become friends, which is what we now call the sort of superficial acquaintance that is the only relationship possible when people are unable to discuss anything important. I know that Adam is married, has no children, and had spent his career before the siege as a lay professor of theology at the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea. I knew from that first day in the park that he wanted something from me, but I waited patiently for him to ask. He would ask when he was ready. When he proposed the risky enterprise of a long vacation during which I should write a memoir, I refused.
“Why, Adam?” I asked. “You’ve got to tell me why you want me to write this thing and what you plan to do with it.”
“You need to trust me.”
“How the hell can I trust you? I hardly know you.”
“You trust me enough to have this conversation. You know we’re careful,” he replied.
“True. But talking to you is something I might survive if they found out. But leaving town, somehow going off the Purity Web—which by the way I sincerely doubt is possible—and then writing everything that happened, telling the truth … That’s entirely different.” I paused. “And by the way, who is ‘we’? Are you telling me that Free Minds is real?”
“No. I’m not saying that.” He looked annoyed with me. “Please, Greg. I know about you. I know what you did. I know he was your friend. We need you to tell your story. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You’re asking me to commit suicide. No.”
A few days later, I changed my mind. You may think that I harbor some kind of self-destructive urge. Perhaps so. Not sure what I was going to do or why, I decided to do what Adam had asked. It had been a long time since anyone had asked me to do anything, and it felt odd to be asked, for someone to suggest that I was needed. Saying yes suddenly seemed easier than saying no. You should know that. Coming here was not an act of courage.
Adam and I departed Manhattan by train. We were met at the station in the Hudson Valley town of Peekskill by the owner of a small inn located in the nearby hamlet of Putnam Valley. After both of us scanned in as guests, Adam wordlessly handed his Device across the counter to the innkeeper. They both looked at me, silently indicating that I should do the same. The day I left Governors Island, the outplacement officer informed me that I was required to have my Device with me at all times. In the five years since then, I have obeyed. So I hesitated. Although not a suspicious word passed between them, the owners of the inn, Adam said, were “friends.” I had stopped asking about FM. The feds denied the existence of the Free Minds movement, and even I, on balance, assumed it was more secret longing than reality. After all, with the Purity Web encompassing every possible means of communication, observing every meeting and movement, analyzing everything one read or wrote—with the big machines knowing us better than we knew ourselves—how could a movement like that organize or function? But Adam was real, and Adam had “friends.” I handed over my Device and immediately felt more abandoned than liberated.
We walked out the back door of the inn and entered the woods on an old dirt road, now a narrow path kept open by deer. I was overwhelmed by the smell. The woodsy air, damp and infused with the dusty fluff kicked up by our steps, carried odors of mold, decay, fungus, and scat. The only nature I had known after Governors Island was the little wild garden behind our communal house on Commerce Street. It had been sunny and dry. When had I last smelled the woods? I couldn’t remember. I inhaled deeply, and my head felt light. Adam gave me an odd look.
“You OK?” he asked. “Don’t worry about your Device. I’ve gone up to five weeks without touching, and didn’t go pink. My friend knows what he’s doing. He’ll take care of us.”
I nodded, distracted. The smells of the woods told a story, the story of an approaching hemlock stand, of a distant carcass, and of granite ledge rock radiating back the heat of the morning sun. I had forgotten how rich, complex, and without judgment were the smells of nature. For the moment, I was glad I had come.
We hiked for three miles, until the path ended abruptly. The rocky cut, through which the old road crested the hill, had been blasted closed. It appeared impassable. Adam led me through dense brush down along the ridge to an ominous-looking gap between two large boulders. We squeezed through, crawled under the corner of another enormous rock, and emerged on the far side of the ridge, where I saw a gem-like lake at the bottom of a steep valley.
We scrambled down the boulder-strewn slope to the lake’s edge. The water was clear. I could see the algae-covered stones on the bottom, and tadpoles swimming erratically among them. We walked along the shore for about a half mile and suddenly came upon a decrepit two-story cedar cottage, set into the side of the hill, with a partially collapsed covered porch running along the water side of the building. From the outside, it gave every appearance of being abandoned. Inside, it was clean and dry, powered silently by solar panels that looked at least twenty years old.
This is the second day I have sat in front of this machine staring out at the lake. I have underestimated the difficulty of this project. A great stone seems to have been rolled across the only door to that part of my brain in which the past resides, and I don’t have the strength to push it aside. It protects me from memory, keeping the demons behind it from penetrating my consciousness. It even keeps them out of my dreams. I realize that not once have I dreamt of the past. And now Adam says I must remember. Recollection, synthesis, and meaning he repeats like a mantra.
I close my eyes. This time I suddenly remember opening them that warm summer day in August 2020. Only nine years ago. The feds had finally ended the siege of Manhattan and invaded through Battery Park. When I came to I was lying facedown on a lawn. My eyes and cheeks were caked with dried blood, and I could see only a few blurry blades of grass beside my nose. I could hear the sound of the harbor waves, and knew that I was still in the park. My wrists were secured behind my back with a thick plastic zip tie. My shoulders ached, and I surmised that I had been lying there, hands tied, for at least a few hours. My ankles were also secured with a zip tie, but I didn’t care. I was too exhausted to move in any case, and quickly slipped back out of consciousness.
When next I woke it was nighttime. A soft warm August night. I hadn’t been moved, but this time my eyes could focus. I later learned that almost six thousand secular fighters had been captured and brought to the Battery. During the day, teams of army medics had performed triage, evacuating the seriously wounded to hospital ships in the harbor. While I was passed out, my shallow but bloody scalp wound had been cleaned and bandaged and the blood wiped off my face. My arms by this time were numb, and the pain in my shoulder had disappeared, replaced by a sharp headache centered on the place where the bullet had gouged a neat pencil-thin groove in my skull. I shifted my legs and managed to roll onto my side. I could see only bodies. Seventeen acres of bodies. The white plastic zip ties shone with a weird iridescence in the moonlight, an effect that was oddly decorative. Some of the prisoners had managed to turn over and sit upright, arms behind their back and legs stretched out front, but most remained facedown and still. Other than the sound of the harbor waves against the Battery breakwater, all I could hear was the occasional stifled sob. No one screamed. No one spoke. Regular fed army and marines stood casually on guard, looking bored. When I closed my eyes, I daydreamed that I was an African deep in the hold of a slave ship. Shackled. The sound of waves slapping against the hull. Silent stinking African bodies my companions and only comfort.
My mind was sluggish, like an agonizingly slow computer. Churning and churning, and ultimately failing to put the thoughts and words into coherent order. I should be dead. These four words repeated themselves in a demented feedback loop. I should be dead. I, a corporate lawyer with no aptitude for violence, stood up and shot at a company of charging US Marines. They wanted me dead. I stood up to die. I should be dead. And now they had bandaged my wound.
Later that night, civilian Red Cross volunteers were allowed into the Battery with drinking water. A solidly built Chinese lady who looked about seventy years old squatted beside me and dipped a battered paper coffee cup into a large bucket of water. She gently lifted my head and gave me a drink and a sad smile. On the side of the blue coffee cup I saw the familiar white Greek key rim and the large gold letters “WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU.” This offbeat symbol of New York City’s cheesy, ironic culture reminded me of all that we had just lost; and bound and facedown on the ground, for the first time since the shooting started, I wept.
À la recherche du temps perdu
SITTING HERE OVERLOOKING INDIAN LAKE, it feels strange to be outside New York City for the first time in ten years. For the past five years, I have worked at the Christian Nation Archives in New York, in what formerly was the Bobst Library of New York University. The old libraries are closed, of course, but not all the collections have been destroyed. As “indexers,” we are charged with the task of coding the remaining books for preservation or destruction, and occasionally retrieving books requested by public officials or scholars whose research has been sanctioned by the Church of God in America, universally referred to as COGA. All academic and cultural organizations operate under the supervision of COGA, a sprawling enterprise. Most of us from Governors Island were placed with COGA-affiliated employers, which allows them to keep a close eye on our progress. GI has faith in its graduates, but even for them there are limits to faith. I find the physical presence of the books to be a comfort. We are constantly reminded that the eradication of evil is vital work entrusted only to those of us who know Christ and thus have the fortitude for the task.
Six months ago, a new indexer named Adam settled in to work at a table two rows behind mine. He is the only African American in our group, and his rimless glasses, tweedy garb, and strong vocabulary immediately suggested to me that he had been a scholar. For the first two weeks he ignored me, nearly to the point of rudeness. Then, during his third week, seeing that I was heading to Washington Square Park for lunch, Adam casually asked if he could join me. He chose a remote bench facing a dense stand of shrubs. He asked lots of questions about work and dodged most of my questions about him. When we finished our sandwiches and rose from the bench, he glanced to see that no one was near and then said simply, “Greg, you need to know that I am here because of you.” Before I could respond, he shook my hand, giving it that distinctive extra squeeze I had felt from a few others, and then turned to walk back to the library by himself.
Two weeks later, Adam and I had become friends, which is what we now call the sort of superficial acquaintance that is the only relationship possible when people are unable to discuss anything important. I know that Adam is married, has no children, and had spent his career before the siege as a lay professor of theology at the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea. I knew from that first day in the park that he wanted something from me, but I waited patiently for him to ask. He would ask when he was ready. When he proposed the risky enterprise of a long vacation during which I should write a memoir, I refused.
“Why, Adam?” I asked. “You’ve got to tell me why you want me to write this thing and what you plan to do with it.”
“You need to trust me.”
“How the hell can I trust you? I hardly know you.”
“You trust me enough to have this conversation. You know we’re careful,” he replied.
“True. But talking to you is something I might survive if they found out. But leaving town, somehow going off the Purity Web—which by the way I sincerely doubt is possible—and then writing everything that happened, telling the truth … That’s entirely different.” I paused. “And by the way, who is ‘we’? Are you telling me that Free Minds is real?”
“No. I’m not saying that.” He looked annoyed with me. “Please, Greg. I know about you. I know what you did. I know he was your friend. We need you to tell your story. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You’re asking me to commit suicide. No.”
A few days later, I changed my mind. You may think that I harbor some kind of self-destructive urge. Perhaps so. Not sure what I was going to do or why, I decided to do what Adam had asked. It had been a long time since anyone had asked me to do anything, and it felt odd to be asked, for someone to suggest that I was needed. Saying yes suddenly seemed easier than saying no. You should know that. Coming here was not an act of courage.
Adam and I departed Manhattan by train. We were met at the station in the Hudson Valley town of Peekskill by the owner of a small inn located in the nearby hamlet of Putnam Valley. After both of us scanned in as guests, Adam wordlessly handed his Device across the counter to the innkeeper. They both looked at me, silently indicating that I should do the same. The day I left Governors Island, the outplacement officer informed me that I was required to have my Device with me at all times. In the five years since then, I have obeyed. So I hesitated. Although not a suspicious word passed between them, the owners of the inn, Adam said, were “friends.” I had stopped asking about FM. The feds denied the existence of the Free Minds movement, and even I, on balance, assumed it was more secret longing than reality. After all, with the Purity Web encompassing every possible means of communication, observing every meeting and movement, analyzing everything one read or wrote—with the big machines knowing us better than we knew ourselves—how could a movement like that organize or function? But Adam was real, and Adam had “friends.” I handed over my Device and immediately felt more abandoned than liberated.
We walked out the back door of the inn and entered the woods on an old dirt road, now a narrow path kept open by deer. I was overwhelmed by the smell. The woodsy air, damp and infused with the dusty fluff kicked up by our steps, carried odors of mold, decay, fungus, and scat. The only nature I had known after Governors Island was the little wild garden behind our communal house on Commerce Street. It had been sunny and dry. When had I last smelled the woods? I couldn’t remember. I inhaled deeply, and my head felt light. Adam gave me an odd look.
“You OK?” he asked. “Don’t worry about your Device. I’ve gone up to five weeks without touching, and didn’t go pink. My friend knows what he’s doing. He’ll take care of us.”
I nodded, distracted. The smells of the woods told a story, the story of an approaching hemlock stand, of a distant carcass, and of granite ledge rock radiating back the heat of the morning sun. I had forgotten how rich, complex, and without judgment were the smells of nature. For the moment, I was glad I had come.
We hiked for three miles, until the path ended abruptly. The rocky cut, through which the old road crested the hill, had been blasted closed. It appeared impassable. Adam led me through dense brush down along the ridge to an ominous-looking gap between two large boulders. We squeezed through, crawled under the corner of another enormous rock, and emerged on the far side of the ridge, where I saw a gem-like lake at the bottom of a steep valley.
We scrambled down the boulder-strewn slope to the lake’s edge. The water was clear. I could see the algae-covered stones on the bottom, and tadpoles swimming erratically among them. We walked along the shore for about a half mile and suddenly came upon a decrepit two-story cedar cottage, set into the side of the hill, with a partially collapsed covered porch running along the water side of the building. From the outside, it gave every appearance of being abandoned. Inside, it was clean and dry, powered silently by solar panels that looked at least twenty years old.
This is the second day I have sat in front of this machine staring out at the lake. I have underestimated the difficulty of this project. A great stone seems to have been rolled across the only door to that part of my brain in which the past resides, and I don’t have the strength to push it aside. It protects me from memory, keeping the demons behind it from penetrating my consciousness. It even keeps them out of my dreams. I realize that not once have I dreamt of the past. And now Adam says I must remember. Recollection, synthesis, and meaning he repeats like a mantra.
I close my eyes. This time I suddenly remember opening them that warm summer day in August 2020. Only nine years ago. The feds had finally ended the siege of Manhattan and invaded through Battery Park. When I came to I was lying facedown on a lawn. My eyes and cheeks were caked with dried blood, and I could see only a few blurry blades of grass beside my nose. I could hear the sound of the harbor waves, and knew that I was still in the park. My wrists were secured behind my back with a thick plastic zip tie. My shoulders ached, and I surmised that I had been lying there, hands tied, for at least a few hours. My ankles were also secured with a zip tie, but I didn’t care. I was too exhausted to move in any case, and quickly slipped back out of consciousness.
When next I woke it was nighttime. A soft warm August night. I hadn’t been moved, but this time my eyes could focus. I later learned that almost six thousand secular fighters had been captured and brought to the Battery. During the day, teams of army medics had performed triage, evacuating the seriously wounded to hospital ships in the harbor. While I was passed out, my shallow but bloody scalp wound had been cleaned and bandaged and the blood wiped off my face. My arms by this time were numb, and the pain in my shoulder had disappeared, replaced by a sharp headache centered on the place where the bullet had gouged a neat pencil-thin groove in my skull. I shifted my legs and managed to roll onto my side. I could see only bodies. Seventeen acres of bodies. The white plastic zip ties shone with a weird iridescence in the moonlight, an effect that was oddly decorative. Some of the prisoners had managed to turn over and sit upright, arms behind their back and legs stretched out front, but most remained facedown and still. Other than the sound of the harbor waves against the Battery breakwater, all I could hear was the occasional stifled sob. No one screamed. No one spoke. Regular fed army and marines stood casually on guard, looking bored. When I closed my eyes, I daydreamed that I was an African deep in the hold of a slave ship. Shackled. The sound of waves slapping against the hull. Silent stinking African bodies my companions and only comfort.
My mind was sluggish, like an agonizingly slow computer. Churning and churning, and ultimately failing to put the thoughts and words into coherent order. I should be dead. These four words repeated themselves in a demented feedback loop. I should be dead. I, a corporate lawyer with no aptitude for violence, stood up and shot at a company of charging US Marines. They wanted me dead. I stood up to die. I should be dead. And now they had bandaged my wound.
Later that night, civilian Red Cross volunteers were allowed into the Battery with drinking water. A solidly built Chinese lady who looked about seventy years old squatted beside me and dipped a battered paper coffee cup into a large bucket of water. She gently lifted my head and gave me a drink and a sad smile. On the side of the blue coffee cup I saw the familiar white Greek key rim and the large gold letters “WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU.” This offbeat symbol of New York City’s cheesy, ironic culture reminded me of all that we had just lost; and bound and facedown on the ground, for the first time since the shooting started, I wept.
1998
—Confucius,
Doctrine of the Mean, chapter XXIII
It is characteristic of the most entire sincerity to be able to foreknow.
—Confucius,
“THIS IS GOOD,” ADAM SAID. The “but” was left unspoken. It has become clear that I am not to have the usual privacy enjoyed by a memoirist at work. Adam is careful not to interrupt when I am typing, but if I leave the desk he picks up the typed pages and reads them. If catharsis is what Adam is pushing, erupting memories and sudden insights should be just the thing. But he is insistent in his call for order.
“One thing leads to another,” he said. “Think dominoes.” Order is hard for me to find. The last twenty-five years sometimes seem to be a singular moment, the beginning not appreciably more distant than the end, like a single point of collapsed time. Like time suspended during an intense conversation, or immersion in a poem. That single point of collapsed time is dense and heavy, like a netsuke with tightly wound grains, turning and looping in three dimensions, its superficial features providing only subtle clues to its inner meaning. It is not, for me, a thing easily deconstructed. But deconstruction is what I must do.
Looking out the window, I see Adam standing on the shore of the small lake, which he tells me is named Indian Lake. He is casually skipping stones across its calm surface and then staring at the ripples as if they tell a riveting story accessible only to him. For the first time in over five years, I force myself to activate that part of my mind that sits apart, and observe the wisps of recollection as they arise and drift across the rest of my brain. And for the first time in a long while, I allow myself to think about my best friend, and the finest person I ever knew, Sanjay Sharma.
We met on my first day of college in 1998, moving into the freshmen dorm room we shared. I could tell that my parents had doubts. Not that they were prone to racial prejudice, but aristocratic Indians were simply outside the scope of their experience. Sanjay’s mother wore a beautiful purple sari. His father’s English tweeds seemed not very practical for hauling in boxes from the Land Rover parked outside. We quickly learned that this task was delegated to a darker-skinned Indian man introduced only as “our helper.” I think my dad, who was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, felt outclassed. But Sanjay himself—putting aside his Indian ethnicity and striking good looks—seemed to me like an ordinary eighteen-year-old American, his choice in brand of jeans, polo shirt, and sneakers the same as mine. As I soon discovered, there was nothing ordinary about him.
MY FINGERS HAVE hovered over the keyboard now for a good five minutes. I am surprised at how much the Sanjay I met that day in Princeton was the same as the Sanjay who, fourteen years later, I worked with, fought with, and then did not die with. He was the same person at ages eighteen and thirty-two. I used to try to imagine him as a child—thinking he may have been one of those bizarre old-men children, a Little Father Time from Jude the Obscure, unnaturally wise, scarily seeming to know what children should not know. But he assured me he was not like that as a child, and I believed him. He was not that sort of saint.
Sanjay spent most of his childhood in the United States. His English was unaccented but slightly formal in the manner of his parents, including an aversion to contractions. He retained a ghostly trace of the Indian head wobble and a more pronounced shadow of the typical Indian mannerism in which the head is slightly cocked to one side when considering a question. Few people noticed these habits in Sanjay, but everyone noticed how he looked at you. He had an unusual gaze that was completely attentive. His eyes were a deep warm amniotic brown, and these soft liquid eyes stared out at you as if you were the focus of his world. And you were, at that moment. This is easy to misunderstand. Sometimes attentive people seem to skewer you with their eyes. It can feel aggressive and unnerving. Not so with Sanjay. Although his focus was complete, his attention was tender, neither judgmental nor threatening. I don’t know anyone who ever met him who was not affected by the way he looked at them.
I didn’t have the words when we first met, but I later realized that these qualities—of being present, focused, and “mindful”—were not natural attributes of his character but qualities carefully cultivated over his short lifetime. When he was a child, his immigrant parents urged him to shun all things Indian and become completely American. So with the typical contrarianism of precocious children, he insisted on taking up yoga at age ten. By thirteen he had mastered the full Ashtanga series of yoga poses.
One night early during freshman year, a female friend called and asked if Sanjay wanted to join her for a drink after an evening lecture. He demurred, and she asked why. I overheard his strange reply: “I hope you will forgive me, Patricia, but your conversation, although entertaining, I generally do not find intellectually stimulating. It may be selfish of me, but tonight I am looking to be intellectually stimulated, not simply entertained.”
“San, buddy, you can’t say things like that,” I admonished him after he hung up.
“Like what?”
“Like telling a friend that you don’t find her conversation stimulating and that’s the reason you won’t go have a drink with her.”
“But it is absolutely true.”
He eventually learned that minor falsehood is a lubricant without which social life cannot run smoothly, and he mastered it to that minimum extent. But Sanjay remained a natural truth teller. This complete sincerity, more than anything else, was what later made him such an effective leader at Theocracy Watch. And, as it turned out, his enveloping focus and obvious sincerity survived the intermediation of the television camera. He was spectacular on TV.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that unless someone was the type who could never see beauty in a person of another race, people usually thought that Sanjay was one of the most handsome men they had ever seen. Over the years a great deal of airtime was devoted by the media to the subject of Sanjay’s extraordinary face, in which all elements were in perfect harmony—“super-symmetry,” joked one of our physicist friends at Princeton. His skin was the color of warm polished cinnamon except below the perfectly defined edge of his beard, where a fine pixilated black shadow was visible even though he was always clean shaven. His jaw and cheeks were strong and slightly wider than usual for a Brahmin. The resulting face straddled, or perhaps combined, the elegance that Indians celebrated in their aristocratic men and the more robust masculine qualities that were considered desirable in the West. His hair was a black so luminous that all other colors were visibly collected up in each strand.
For our fundamentalist opponents, this perfect face was evidence of dark forces at work. This was because the Antichrist, according to prophecy, would take the form of a handsome young man. Sanjay was the popular champion standing against the establishment of the Godly Kingdom. The fact that he was also Indian (which they always referred to as “pagan”), and gay, certainly seemed to them to complete the satanic profile.
Before the time that President Palin first cited Sanjay’s physical appearance as evidence of his demonic nature, it was a feature that he wore lightly, neither viewing it as a burden nor deliberately wielding it for effect. He never denied he was good-looking, but neither did he use his looks to charm or flirt or persuade. He was too honest and too confident of the power of his words for that. This unself-conscious innocence merely magnified his appeal to women and men alike.
Sanjay told me the first night we met that he was gay. It was news he delivered without drama as we got to know each other over a beer. I told him about my sister and my parents, my undistinguished career as a high school jock, and the casual high school girlfriend I had sensibly broken up with over the summer. He told me about his family’s life in India, why his parents emigrated, what it was like to be an only child, that he was gay, and that he did yoga. I confess that I worried for a few days that having a gay roommate might impair my own social life. To my shame, I felt compelled to have a very public fling with a cute girl in the next entryway to ensure there would be no room for speculation about my own sexual preference.
In a few days, I realized how stupid I had been. Sanjay was extraordinarily popular with men and women alike. He had an ease that allowed him to circulate among the different circles of college social life in a way few other students could. And from freshman year on, it was I who was carried along in the wave of friends and fans who gathered around my roommate.
I’ve often wondered why Sanjay chose me for his most intense and long-lasting friendship. After freshman year he could have switched to any number of accomplished and fascinating roommates. But he never waivered. By October we were best friends, and no one—neither the occasional boyfriend of his nor my girlfriend Emilie, with whom I lived for six painful years—changed that. Ultimately, that is. Emilie came close.
One thing about me that I know did interest Sanjay was this odd gift that I have. In another age, I might have thought of myself as some sort of seer or clairvoyant. But it really is just a knack for sudden, sometimes extreme situational awareness. It’s not a habit of mind that I can call up at will; it just happens.
“It feels like a kind of out-of-body experience,” I told Sanjay one night in the dorm after we had watched Saturday Night Live and had a few beers. Thinking about it today, I remember the sounds of the campus on a late Saturday night floating in through our open casement window.
“The first time it happened, at least that I can remember, was the day of my first middle school football game,” I told Sanjay. “We were in the locker room, dressed in brand-new uniforms. I was excited, but mostly just scared—not that we would lose, but scared that I would do something stupid or embarrassing, like run down the field in the wrong direction or fumble. You know how it is.” Sanjay looked empathetic, but he was too honest to signal that he did indeed have experience with that type of anxiety. It seemed clear that he didn’t. Anyway, I continued.
“Just before we ran onto the field, San, the coach told us to get down on our knees. We all knelt. Then he said a prayer.” I did a bad imitation of the coach’s flat midwestern accent:
Doctrine of the Mean, chapter XXIV
“THIS IS GOOD,” ADAM SAID. The “but” was left unspoken. It has become clear that I am not to have the usual privacy enjoyed by a memoirist at work. Adam is careful not to interrupt when I am typing, but if I leave the desk he picks up the typed pages and reads them. If catharsis is what Adam is pushing, erupting memories and sudden insights should be just the thing. But he is insistent in his call for order.
“One thing leads to another,” he said. “Think dominoes.” Order is hard for me to find. The last twenty-five years sometimes seem to be a singular moment, the beginning not appreciably more distant than the end, like a single point of collapsed time. Like time suspended during an intense conversation, or immersion in a poem. That single point of collapsed time is dense and heavy, like a netsuke with tightly wound grains, turning and looping in three dimensions, its superficial features providing only subtle clues to its inner meaning. It is not, for me, a thing easily deconstructed. But deconstruction is what I must do.
Looking out the window, I see Adam standing on the shore of the small lake, which he tells me is named Indian Lake. He is casually skipping stones across its calm surface and then staring at the ripples as if they tell a riveting story accessible only to him. For the first time in over five years, I force myself to activate that part of my mind that sits apart, and observe the wisps of recollection as they arise and drift across the rest of my brain. And for the first time in a long while, I allow myself to think about my best friend, and the finest person I ever knew, Sanjay Sharma.
We met on my first day of college in 1998, moving into the freshmen dorm room we shared. I could tell that my parents had doubts. Not that they were prone to racial prejudice, but aristocratic Indians were simply outside the scope of their experience. Sanjay’s mother wore a beautiful purple sari. His father’s English tweeds seemed not very practical for hauling in boxes from the Land Rover parked outside. We quickly learned that this task was delegated to a darker-skinned Indian man introduced only as “our helper.” I think my dad, who was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, felt outclassed. But Sanjay himself—putting aside his Indian ethnicity and striking good looks—seemed to me like an ordinary eighteen-year-old American, his choice in brand of jeans, polo shirt, and sneakers the same as mine. As I soon discovered, there was nothing ordinary about him.
Sanjay spent most of his childhood in the United States. His English was unaccented but slightly formal in the manner of his parents, including an aversion to contractions. He retained a ghostly trace of the Indian head wobble and a more pronounced shadow of the typical Indian mannerism in which the head is slightly cocked to one side when considering a question. Few people noticed these habits in Sanjay, but everyone noticed how he looked at you. He had an unusual gaze that was completely attentive. His eyes were a deep warm amniotic brown, and these soft liquid eyes stared out at you as if you were the focus of his world. And you were, at that moment. This is easy to misunderstand. Sometimes attentive people seem to skewer you with their eyes. It can feel aggressive and unnerving. Not so with Sanjay. Although his focus was complete, his attention was tender, neither judgmental nor threatening. I don’t know anyone who ever met him who was not affected by the way he looked at them.
I didn’t have the words when we first met, but I later realized that these qualities—of being present, focused, and “mindful”—were not natural attributes of his character but qualities carefully cultivated over his short lifetime. When he was a child, his immigrant parents urged him to shun all things Indian and become completely American. So with the typical contrarianism of precocious children, he insisted on taking up yoga at age ten. By thirteen he had mastered the full Ashtanga series of yoga poses.
One night early during freshman year, a female friend called and asked if Sanjay wanted to join her for a drink after an evening lecture. He demurred, and she asked why. I overheard his strange reply: “I hope you will forgive me, Patricia, but your conversation, although entertaining, I generally do not find intellectually stimulating. It may be selfish of me, but tonight I am looking to be intellectually stimulated, not simply entertained.”
“San, buddy, you can’t say things like that,” I admonished him after he hung up.
“Like what?”
“Like telling a friend that you don’t find her conversation stimulating and that’s the reason you won’t go have a drink with her.”
“But it is absolutely true.”
He eventually learned that minor falsehood is a lubricant without which social life cannot run smoothly, and he mastered it to that minimum extent. But Sanjay remained a natural truth teller. This complete sincerity, more than anything else, was what later made him such an effective leader at Theocracy Watch. And, as it turned out, his enveloping focus and obvious sincerity survived the intermediation of the television camera. He was spectacular on TV.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that unless someone was the type who could never see beauty in a person of another race, people usually thought that Sanjay was one of the most handsome men they had ever seen. Over the years a great deal of airtime was devoted by the media to the subject of Sanjay’s extraordinary face, in which all elements were in perfect harmony—“super-symmetry,” joked one of our physicist friends at Princeton. His skin was the color of warm polished cinnamon except below the perfectly defined edge of his beard, where a fine pixilated black shadow was visible even though he was always clean shaven. His jaw and cheeks were strong and slightly wider than usual for a Brahmin. The resulting face straddled, or perhaps combined, the elegance that Indians celebrated in their aristocratic men and the more robust masculine qualities that were considered desirable in the West. His hair was a black so luminous that all other colors were visibly collected up in each strand.
For our fundamentalist opponents, this perfect face was evidence of dark forces at work. This was because the Antichrist, according to prophecy, would take the form of a handsome young man. Sanjay was the popular champion standing against the establishment of the Godly Kingdom. The fact that he was also Indian (which they always referred to as “pagan”), and gay, certainly seemed to them to complete the satanic profile.
Before the time that President Palin first cited Sanjay’s physical appearance as evidence of his demonic nature, it was a feature that he wore lightly, neither viewing it as a burden nor deliberately wielding it for effect. He never denied he was good-looking, but neither did he use his looks to charm or flirt or persuade. He was too honest and too confident of the power of his words for that. This unself-conscious innocence merely magnified his appeal to women and men alike.
Sanjay told me the first night we met that he was gay. It was news he delivered without drama as we got to know each other over a beer. I told him about my sister and my parents, my undistinguished career as a high school jock, and the casual high school girlfriend I had sensibly broken up with over the summer. He told me about his family’s life in India, why his parents emigrated, what it was like to be an only child, that he was gay, and that he did yoga. I confess that I worried for a few days that having a gay roommate might impair my own social life. To my shame, I felt compelled to have a very public fling with a cute girl in the next entryway to ensure there would be no room for speculation about my own sexual preference.
In a few days, I realized how stupid I had been. Sanjay was extraordinarily popular with men and women alike. He had an ease that allowed him to circulate among the different circles of college social life in a way few other students could. And from freshman year on, it was I who was carried along in the wave of friends and fans who gathered around my roommate.
I’ve often wondered why Sanjay chose me for his most intense and long-lasting friendship. After freshman year he could have switched to any number of accomplished and fascinating roommates. But he never waivered. By October we were best friends, and no one—neither the occasional boyfriend of his nor my girlfriend Emilie, with whom I lived for six painful years—changed that. Ultimately, that is. Emilie came close.
One thing about me that I know did interest Sanjay was this odd gift that I have. In another age, I might have thought of myself as some sort of seer or clairvoyant. But it really is just a knack for sudden, sometimes extreme situational awareness. It’s not a habit of mind that I can call up at will; it just happens.
“It feels like a kind of out-of-body experience,” I told Sanjay one night in the dorm after we had watched Saturday Night Live and had a few beers. Thinking about it today, I remember the sounds of the campus on a late Saturday night floating in through our open casement window.
“The first time it happened, at least that I can remember, was the day of my first middle school football game,” I told Sanjay. “We were in the locker room, dressed in brand-new uniforms. I was excited, but mostly just scared—not that we would lose, but scared that I would do something stupid or embarrassing, like run down the field in the wrong direction or fumble. You know how it is.” Sanjay looked empathetic, but he was too honest to signal that he did indeed have experience with that type of anxiety. It seemed clear that he didn’t. Anyway, I continued.
“Just before we ran onto the field, San, the coach told us to get down on our knees. We all knelt. Then he said a prayer.” I did a bad imitation of the coach’s flat midwestern accent:
“Lord, as we prepare to join the field of battle, we ask you for strength, we ask you to lead us to victory. Victory in your name, and in the name of your son, Je-sus. Help us to vanquish our foe, to defeat our enemy, to …, you know, to defeat evil. Take the field with us, Je-sus. Well, you know. Screw the other bastards. Amen.”
“And you know what happened then, San? Suddenly in my mind’s eye I was looking down at the locker room from somewhere up in the air, looking down on twenty scrawny teenagers, dressed ridiculously, on their knees, invoking the personal intervention of the deity—the deity responsible for the spinning galaxies and the quantum flux—to take their side in a pissant football game. I had absolute situational clarity. I didn’t have the vocabulary at the time to articulate it, but I completely and profoundly understood what I was seeing. I felt—so strongly that I had trouble keeping my composure—the absurdity, futility, humanity, and pathos of the moment. I … Let’s say I didn’t play very well that day.”
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0425259749/sfsi0c-20
V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History
With a gift for visionary fiction that “would make Robert A. Heinlein proud” (Entertainment Weekly) three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: what if the race to space had occurred in the early days of WWII?
It's 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his Fuehrer to abandon the V2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the U.S. Work on the rocket—called Silbervogel—begins at Peenemunde. Though it is top secret, British intelligence discovers the plan, and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt. The American President determines that there is only one logical response: the U.S. must build a spacecraft capable of intercepting Silbervogel and destroying it. Robert Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket, agrees to head the classified project.
So begins a race against time—between two secret military programs and two brilliant scientists whose high-stakes competition will spiral into a deadly game of political intrigue and unforeseen catastrophes played to the death in the brutal skies above America.
One of his earlier books, The Tranquility Alternative also feeds off of the Goddard's People storyline. The short-story John Harper Wilson, which appears in the Rude Astronauts collection also takes place in this history.
I recently downloaded and read the three "Invasion America" novels by Vaughn Heppner that were previewed upthread. They are entertaining, but lord, the Americans seem to be a hapless bunch, constantly getting outmaneuvered/pocketed/trapped. As you might expect, the novels all end with American 'victories', but all of them seem to leave the enemies still in control of vast swathes of US territory, so these 'victories' seem to be more 'setbacks' for the enemy than real defeats. Still, I look forward to reading any more he writes in the series...
JSmith
Banned
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451569661/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
The United States of Vinland: The Landing (The Markland Trilogy) (Volume 1) [Paperback]
Book Description
Publication Date: March 13, 2013 | Series: The Markland Trilogy
What if?
What if the descendants of the Vikings who settled Greenland and went on to reach North America around the end of the first millennium had stayed?
Five hundred years later, would Christopher Columbus have arrived to the south of an eastern seaboard dotted with centuries old settlements and towns hosting devotees to Odin and Thor?
Might the Norse have gone on to build a nation as dominant as the United States of our own world?
A thousand years after reaching Greenland, Vinland and Markland, would we still have had two world wars? What might the world look like? Where might the political and religious divides be drawn?
This is the New World.
***
At the turn of the first millennium:
Eskil, orphaned in war, but now a man, is leading his followers to found a settlement in the west dedicated to Odin and Asgard's gods. There he will build a new realm, and after tests, adventures and trials, he will leave a legacy that will grow to be the strongest nation the world has ever seen.
The Landing is the first book in The United States of Vinland series and is an alternate history that begins the saga with the establishment of the first Markland halls. Join the adventure!
Welcome to Norse America.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 | - | The Landing Squall
Chapter 2 | - | Markland
Chapter 3 | - | Godsland
Chapter 4 | - | The Wolf
Part II
Chapter 5 | - | Smoke
Chapter 6 | - | Lakeland
Chapter 7 | - | Welcomed
Part III
Chapter 8 | - | Spring
Chapter 9 | - | Alfvin
Chapter 10 | - | Ari
Part IV
Chapter 11 | - | The Lonely Vales
Chapter 12 | - | Torrador & Seta
Chapter 13 | - | Back to Lakeland
Chapter 14 | - | A Mournful Cry
Part V
Chapter 15 | - | To Guldale
Chapter 16 | - | The Beach
Epilogue
Epilogue | - | Smoke on the Horizon
Loki’s Rage
The Landing: | A Note From the Author
The Landing: | Characters
The Landing: | Locations & Terms
The Ossard Trilogy
About the Author
Chapter 1
-
The Landing Squall
All Eskil knew was the smothering chill of the embracing sea. As the waves passed, they rhythmically lifted and lowered him and the broken mast to which he clung. But he was not able to focus on any of that; his body was numb, his thoughts slow and thick.
Death beckoned.
A storm had come from nowhere, to darken the sky and push their two ships off course. Fierce winds and mountainous waves had driven them well away from their Greenland heading, and then, after what seemed an eternity of battling the tempest, both had stolen the other ship out of sight. At that point, with a prayer to Odin, Eskil could only focus on his own ship and people.
They struggled with exhaustion, until their limbs ached, hoping to handle the protesting ship through the heaving seas. But it was finally swamped by a monstrous wave. His last memories of the chaos were of his crew’s desperate attempts to hold the craft together, until a final wall of brine had come to tear it all apart. Eskil found himself alone in the water, not remembering where he had last seen his expecting wife, Gudrid.
The worst of the weather then dissipated, as if its job was complete.
To lose out at the end of such an elemental fight was maddening, but rage was an emotion Eskil could no longer conjure. Not now, for he was drained and battered, overcome by the chill of the sea.
He knew it would not be long before the cold would claim him, stealing his last breath as it kissed his shivering lips.
He dimly noted the clouds beginning to break up, although the rain continued. Such a thing at least declared that the storm was well and truly past.
Maybe it was a victory of sorts that he had survived such a vile tempest.
He clung to the ruin of the ship’s mast and sail, still bound to the rigging, the best manoeuvre he had been able to manage after finding himself in the sea. Once secured, he had begun calling out, seeking his beloved Gudrid. But because of the continuing rain, he had neither seen nor heard her or any of the others.
Bound to the floating timbers, he was relatively safe from the threat of the sea finding his lungs, although it left him with only one other task – trying to stay awake. If he did not, he would die. He knew the icy water was far more likely to kill him than anything else.
He seemed otherwise alone, if not for the ship’s ruin, the soft call of the wind, and the grey curtain of rain.
Eskil faded, his fatigue rising to overwhelm him, as the rhythmic motion of the waves continued to gently lift and drop him. Around him the wind droned on and the rain eased.
Jerking awake, thus setting his sodden blonde hair to flick about his face, Eskil realised he had blacked out for a moment, or perhaps longer; he was not certain. He tried to curse, but his voice failed him, coming out as a shivering rasp. He should have been frightened, but instead lay his forehead back down against the timber of the mast.
A feeling stirred in him; perhaps his spirit was trying to rally whatever remained. Finally roused, he hissed out across the waves, “Odin, help me! Take me to this new land you have led me to seek!”
There was no answer.
Eskil’s grip began to slacken and his mind began to fall to grim and dark thoughts.
Then he heard a sound, a sound not of the wind or the waves, or even of the gods. The noise grabbed his attention.
What could it be?
It sounded again: the call of a bird, the caw of a raven.
A raven meant land!
He fought to awaken himself, to focus, as he tightened his grip.
The raven sounded again, this time joined by another’s call.
Land!
And then, after that sweet chorus, came the crash of rolling surf.
Land was near!
He lifted his head to look about, seeing nothing but the tight, blue-grey valleys of water between the passing waves. Once it moved on, he roused in time to make a new discovery: beneath the waterline, his numb feet briefly stirred gravel as they dragged along the seabed.
Shallows!
He looked past the mast and tangled lines, and the cloth of the ship’s sail in front of him, to the overcast western sky, where the grey shroud of rain was brighter because it hid the sun.
To the west, where yet more land was reputed to be.
His feet then found the shallows again.
While still hugging the mast and up to his neck in the chilled sea, Eskil took a step forward, only to find yet more rising seabed.
The curtain of rain continued to fade, revealing huge but distant silhouettes. The dark, steep-sided forms loomed as if they mouthed a great fjord. With each moment, more land became visible, in shades of grey, as a rugged coastline opened up in front of him.
“By Odin!” he whispered through chattering teeth.
Eskil took another step on the stones of the seabed, only to find the water so shallow that he stumbled to his knees. His spirit soared as he worked with numb and awkward fingers to untangle himself from the rigging that had bound him to the mast. Finally breaking free, he rose and stepped forward as he sought to escape the water.
He would live!
He looked at the land emerging from the receding drizzle as he stumbled forward. His mind, still half lost, began to stir, but for now he noted the green of grass and grey of rock ahead; he realized he remained alone. Gazing up and down the shoreline, he searched for a sign that the others had also made it to land.
Anyone, but most especially his Gudrid!
The thought overcame him, setting him to shake and shiver as he staggered out of the foaming surf. He had promised his thirty followers a new life of land and freedom, a life away from the rising kings and the creeping influence of the White Christ.
They would only honour the old gods!
Just ahead of him, the rocky shore ascended to a narrow pasture, a few shrubs and a tumble of larger stones before the side of a low green hill began. The steeper entry into the fjord rose farther along the shore as it ran away to meet with other valleys. Yet, much remained lost in the colourless haze of drizzle.
After a few more exhausted steps, he was out of the water, across the stony shore, and onto the pasture.
He dropped to his knees.
Here he was alone in the wilds, lost on the rugged shores of Markland, or another place beyond Greenland.
But he had survived!
Behind him, debris from the ship washed up, stranded next to a large, already-beached section of the hull. He could also see one of his people bobbing face down in the water.
He got up and stumbled back to the surf, reaching Drifa’s body. He pulled her up to the gravel – but to no avail – she was still and dead.
“Damn you, Odin,” he growled, “I was doing this for you! To bring your faith to a new land, away from those who have turned from your might!” Exhausted, verging on delirium, he collapsed onto the rocks leading up to the pasture, his spirit all but broken. “You led me here, you whispered to me in my dreams of a westerly land that I should seek. Well, I did as you directed; now I am here!”
And then the wind died, as the last of the squall’s clouds and rain parted, allowing the mid-afternoon sun to shine down from over the distant heart of the fjord. The light washed over him, golden, generous and warm.
Eskil slowly rose back to his feet as he called out, “Odin, give me this land and I shall give it back to you a thousand-fold!”
A raven called, drawing his attention.
Amidst the golden glare, briefly highlighted by the departing showers, Eskil saw a raven perched on a tall stone rising straight and true by the tumbled boulders at the base of the hill.
He stepped forward, drawn to it.
The raven watched his approach.
He slowed, with each step, not believing what he saw: a stone, taller than a man, marked by the runes of his people.
The runes read: "The Landing".
“By the gods!”
He then heard another voice, the sound of which made his heart jump.
“Eskil?” It was his wife, Gudrid.
He looked down at the base of the standing stone and noticed wet cloth on the grass, trailing away behind it. Putting a hand to the runestone, he leaned on it for support as he stepped around it, holding his breath.
There she sat, with her back to the stone, her woollens still damp from the sea, but lit by the warm sunlight. Already her long blonde hair was mostly dry.
“Gudda!” he whispered in disbelief, using his pet name for her.
She looked up to him, her hands over the small bulge of her expectant belly, her blue eyes sparkling with relief. “Oh, Eskil!”
He dropped to his knees beside her and took her into his arms.
“I thought I had lost you!”
“And I you. But Odin has spared us.” Pulling away from her, he surveyed the green slopes of the hill in front of them and then turned to the steep sides and rocky crests at the entry to the fjord rising farther down the coast. “He has brought us here.”
“But where are we?”
“I’m not sure, perhaps Markland.”
“Markland?”
“I think we passed Greenland.” He pointed to the distant fjord. “And I can see thickets of trees farther down the sound. They might simply be willow and birch, but others will be deeper inland, where they are better sheltered from the fury of the sea. Markland is named after the trees.”
“Markland?” she whispered again.
“Yes. The sailors in Iceland described it as a rugged and harsh land said to be beyond Greenland, but a place with more timber.”
They both turned to take in the view – low green hills behind the beach, running west onto a deep and wide sound along the coast. The steep sides of the fjord rose in the far distance, occasionally edged by narrow, sun-warmed pastures. Glimpses of waterfalls spilled down like white ribbons between exposed rocks and thin woodlands. By the golden light of a summer afternoon, Markland seemed a land of rugged beauty and promise.
Eskil stood and offered his hand to Gudrid; she took it and rose. “Are you hurt?”
She smiled. “Merely tired and cold, although I feel sickly.” One of her hands went to her belly again as she spoke, “I think I swallowed a lot of seawater.”
He nodded as he put an arm about her. “And how long have you been here, sitting against this runestone?”
They both turned to examine the etchings, the raven watching them from above.
“Not long, although to be truthful, I find it hard to think of how it all came about. I grabbed at some wood from the ship and was brought here by the waves. I do not think I was in the water for long, and I did not realise this stone was special until now. I simply came ashore and sought to escape the last of the rain and wind.”
Eskil ran his hand over the stone’s weathered face, his fingers tracing over the rough runes. The stone faced out towards the open sea as a marker.
The raven watched them for a moment, and then jumped into the air, spreading its black wings. The bird flew above their heads and dove down towards the shore. It did not land, instead gliding to pass over the breaking waves. The raven then rose again and turned to land on the broken timbers of the beached hull lying in the shallows. It looked back at them and cried out.
The wet sounds of splashing came to Eskil and Gudrid as something stirred the water nearby. Another part of the ruined ship drifted into view. A small, partially hidden section of timbers emerged from behind the bulk of the beached hull the raven was using as a perch.
Eskil and Gudrid could see three of their people clinging to the timbers as they tried to get to shore, their kicks and strokes heavy with exhaustion.
“Quickly!” Eskil called out as he led Gudrid racing down to the water, wading into the chilly surf to reach them.
They grabbed the three men, one by one, and dragged them to the gravel beach.
The men collapsed. Torrador coughed up water while the blonde brothers, Steinarr and Samr, both gasped for breath.
The raven called out again before leaving the hull, flying up and over them. It turned and dove again, down towards the breakers, as it headed along the shallows and towards the distant fjord. With another call, it flew towards the glare of the sun, but not before drawing Gudrid’s attention up the beach.
Two figures, silhouettes against the golden glare, waved as they staggered towards them.
“More of our people!” Gudrid exclaimed as she left Eskil with the recovering men.
Torrador began a fresh round of choking and retching, ending with a hoarse gasp. “By Odin, thank you, Eskil!”
Eskil knelt beside the big man, relieved to hear his voice. “Only concentrate on getting the sea out and some air in.” He patted the big man firmly on the back, setting his brown hair to jiggle.
Beside them, Steinarr was now on all fours, as was Samr, who was trying to rise.
Gudrid called from down the beach. “Erik is over here!”
Eskil watched the silhouette of the Dane as he crawled from the water, amongst the bobbing timbers and other debris from their ship.
She went to the wretching man who was slumped onto the gravel. As he gathered himself, she called back to Eskil and the others, “There is much here we can use, including the rigging and sail.”
Eskil patted Torrador on the back again as he looked at his wife and whispered, “Thank you, Odin.”
Gudrid remained with Erik as he recovered.
Beyond her, a man and woman approached from down the beach, both moving heavily with fatigue.
Before turning to face the newcomers, she called back to Eskil, “Get the wood and rope, and the sail as well. We will need it for shelter.”
Torrador paused in his recovery and let out a chuckle, despite trying to stifle his mirth in case he embarrassed his leader.
Eskil grinned. That was his Gudda; she was never shy in voicing her opinion. He stood and said, “Come, she talks to you, too!” He glanced at the other men and added, “Steinarr and Samr, we have work to do!”
His friends, coughing to clear their lungs, did as bidden and got to their feet. The four of them began grabbing at any useful debris they found in the surf, pulling it up onto the beach.
Gudrid moved on and met the other survivors, bringing them back to Erik.
Eskil could see it was the Icelandic couple, Ballr and Halla. He liked them; Ballr was a resourceful and trustworthy man.
When Erik the Dane recovered and was on his feet, Gudrid sent him and the Icelanders back to Eskil, as she continued to walk along the beach, looking for more survivors and salvage. Occasionally, she would turn and call back, telling of particular items washed up on shore. After a good while, she turned and made her way back to them, holding a box in her arms.
The survivors reunited; Gudrid returned to Eskil, Torrador and Erik, the brothers Steinarr and young Samr, and Ballr and his wife, Halla. As the afternoon waned, they also collected much of the salvage and began sorting it into piles on the pasture. At one end of their work lay Drifa, her body waiting for their tending.
Eskil looked at his wife, her face now pale, as she cradled the small and familiar wooden box in her arms. “Come, my Gudda, you have done well, but you are exhausting yourself.”
“I shall be alright.”
“No, come and let me sit you back in the sun, against the runestone.”
“There is so much to be done.”
“You can direct us from the runestone, and you can even grumble at me if you like when I do it all wrong, but I will not have you risking your health and that of our unborn.” He led her back up the gravel beach and onto the green pasture before reaching the runestone.
“What of Drifa? She must be put to rest.”
“We will tend to her, but first we must get the salvage before the tide takes it away.”
She nodded, accepting his wisdom.
He added, “We also need to get a shelter up while we have light.”
“Yes; the needs of the living first.”
Helping her down, he knelt beside her. “We will set Drifa to rest when our work is done, after sunset if we must.”
She nodded. “Where will we build?”
“Here.”
“It is too exposed.”
“Yes, but it will do for now. Tomorrow we will look for a better site.”
She gave a weak nod and leaned back against the runestone. “If you build it here, use the stone: It called us here.”
He nodded. “I was going to. Now rest.”
“Eskil?” Her eyes were growing heavy, the lids drooping as she tried to make one last command.
“Yes, my wife?”
She weakly offered the wooden box up to him. “I found these; put them in pride of place, as they are what kept us safe.”
He took the offered box, handling it with care, as it had been handed-down to her by her mother. He unlatched the lid and looked inside, checking that the wood-carved statuettes of the gods remained intact. “I will, my wife, for the gods brought us here after testing us.”
“Yes, to here; to a gods’ land.”
“Yes, to Godsland.”
She nodded and then let her eyes close as she sought sleep.
Gudrid slept, weary first from her own near drowning, and then from her efforts to revive friends and crew. In a slumber bathed in the glow of the afternoon’s summer sun, she dreamt of her babe due to be born in autumn, feeling the innocent’s eagerness to come into this new world. She found comfort in those dreams, watching her child grow in both wisdom and strength. In them, she witnessed a son’s coming of age, of his own fatherhood, and of him finally leading the people of Markland into a grand, god-gifted age.
Here, by the runestone, they would birth a mighty future!
Chapter 2
-
Markland
While Gudrid slept, the men fashioned a simple tent from salvaged rigging, timber and sailcloth. The shelter, pitched at the runestone, was basic, but it would do.
When Gudrid awoke, it was to find her new world falling into twilight, the distant view one of silhouettes and gloom. A good fire burned half-a-dozen paces away, at the edge of the tumbled rocks, much of its light and warmth reaching her while also illuminating the rising hillside behind. The flames’ flickering light also reached the pasture that separated them from the gravel beach. Scattered across the space were piles of salvage – mostly bits of timber, some cloth, rope and other items – all of it helpful, if but basic. A few baskets and three small chests were stacked aside of this. Gudrid felt great relief to see them, for in them should be a mix of blades, tools and seed stock.
Eskil stepped out of the shadows, his stride purposeful as he came to kneel beside her. “How are you?”
She smiled. “Well.”
He took her hands and cupped them in his own. “We have finished the shelter and Halla is preparing some fish.”
“Are we safe?”
“Not from the weather, no; not as safe as I would like us to be. A wind is blowing up and more clouds are appearing, but at sunset, it did not look too bad. We should be alright for one night.”
She asked, “And what of the skraelings?” All of them knew of the tales to come out of Greenland; they had heard of them in Iceland before sailing, of new lands and new peoples.
“We have seen no one. I have sent Steinarr and Samr to walk the beaches and climb the nearest hills. They will be back soon to tell us what they have seen.” He looked out into the dusk. “Or they should be; I need to check on them.”
“And what of the others we dragged from the sea?”
“They are alright, but busy with tasks.”
As he spoke, Halla appeared out of the darkness and walked with a basket in hand. She turned to Gudrid, smiling to see her awake. “I am here if you need anything.”
Gudrid gave a grateful nod and then turned back to Eskil as he continued, “We have also found a few tools and gear amongst the timber salvage, as well as some clothes, cloth and rope. The real problem is that we are mostly unarmed, without any means of going back to sea. I think we will be staying here.”
“That might not be so bad.”
He nodded, but his jaw firmed; he was holding something back.
“What is wrong?”
He grimaced before answering, “We found one of the men, dead.”
“Who?”
“Manni.”
She nodded.
“He was missing a leg, gone just over the knee. A bite was taken out of him.”
“A serpent?”
“I suppose; the lesson is we should be wary of the water.”
She nodded again. “And what of the others?”
“No sign, not yet. Nor any of Leif’s ship.”
She pursed her lips. “Perhaps they have also survived?”
“It is possible, but more likely the sea has taken them.”
“We need him and his people.”
Eskil nodded. “He is a good man, the kind you want by your side.” He shivered, thinking back to how close he had also come to death. “Yes.” He considered his next words before continuing, “We were all lucky. We should be dead.”
“Yet here we are, at the foot of a runestone?”
“It seems the gods wanted us spared.”
She nodded.
“Come, let us get you into the tent. The air is getting cold.” He helped her up and then led her around the runestone and into the shelter, the structure aglow by a small fire within.
Halla was inside tending the fire, a basket by her side.
Eskil said, “I need to check on the others. I will be back soon.” He turned and walked out into the deepening night.
Gudrid overheard Torrador ask Eskil after her health.
Her husband answered him, before asking, “What of Steinarr and Samr?”
“The brothers have gone onto the stream to get some water. The others should also be back soon.”
As Gudrid listened, she realised she had missed out on yet more discoveries. The thought faded though, quickly lost to the smell of cooking fish.
Halla said, “Gudrid, just get comfortable, the fish will be ready soon enough.”
“Who caught the fish?”
“Me, would you believe? I caught them myself!”
“Really?” Gudrid laughed as she stepped towards the Icelander, ready to help, and to also share the fire’s heat.
“I saw some of our baskets floating in the surf, swamped by the waves. When I went to fetch them, I discovered two fish trapped inside one of them.”
Gudrid laughed as she looked down at the fire, the low flames held within a skirting circle of rocks. Two gutted fish lay to the side, spread across a flat stone, surrounded by glowing coals. “You are a fine fisherwoman!”
“A good piece of luck.”
“Or a gift?”
Halla gave a nod before turning back to check on the fish. “We have received more than one gift. Every one of us is alive because the gods want us to be.”
Gudrid nodded.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired, but better, and hungry, after smelling your fish.”
Halla sighed. “If only there was more to eat!”
“Do not fret.”
“And what of this place; Markland, your Eskil calls it? It is not far removed from Vinland, and it is also bound to harbour skraelings.”
“We will simply have to see. We are camping by a runestone, a marker carved by our own kind. This place is already given; not to the skraelings, but to our own people.”
Halla smiled. “Do you think they are here?”
“Our own kind?”
“Yes.”
“They have at least passed through, and most likely would not have carved a runestone if they were just exploring. Maybe farms are farther up the fjord, or maybe they come here in the summer, perhaps for furs or iron, or maybe even timber. Greenland is supposedly not rich in any of those things.”
“Yes, that is why they were supposedly excited about Vinland.”
Gudrid went on, “Let us hope the others are back soon so we can eat. It will be good to bed down for what at least will be a dry night, better than what the storm gave us.”
Halla looked out into the night, through a gap in the sail. A weak breeze stirred, its song backed by the regular crash of surf. “Yes, a dry night and, thanks be to Freya, one during which we will be warm and sheltered. But we will need to head farther up the fjord tomorrow and seek a better place.”
“Have Drifa and Manni been tended to?”
“No, we ran out of light. We laid them out just beyond the salvage. I think the men mean to deal with them soon.”
Gudrid turned her back to the fire to feel its warmth. “And where are the others?”
“They are checking over what has washed up. With the light nearly gone, they all shall be back soon enough.”
Gudrid hoped so.
The weak wind died at last, bringing an almost complete silence to the night. The fire crackled occasionally, but the crash of the surf, as the low waves came to skirmish with the rocks and gravel of the shoreline, was the only other sound.
The world seemed to slip into a sleepier calm, but the silent women were suddenly roused by a slapping thud from somewhere in the gloom.
They tensed and turned to the dark beyond the tent’s opening.
“What was that?” Halla asked.
Gudrid stepped across to look outside, trying to make out what might cause such a sound. She wondered; perhaps a boulder coming to rest after it rolled down the hill that climbed up over the beach? Or perhaps the landing of a beast after bounding down from the same hillside?
With a soft voice, Halla asked, “Can you see anything down along the beach?”
“No.”
Halla stepped across to join her.
Both women stared out into the night.
The light was weak as dusk faded away. They could discern little, with any certainty, particularly on an unfamiliar shoreline littered with rocks, piles of salvage, and other shadowed shapes, either real or imagined.
From the rhythm of crashing waves came a sudden splash at the water’s edge, about sixty paces away, a sound so stark that Halla gave out a gasp. “Something is there!”
Gudrid silenced her with a hand. “Hush, Halla. Do we have any weapons?”
“Only the fire and a small knife...I have the blade here.” She was clutching it tightly in her white-knuckled fist, the blade still slick from gutting the fish.
“Give it to me.”
Halla passed it across, releasing the blade from her shaking grip.
Staring into the night, Gudrid asked, “Can you lift any brands from the fire?”
“There is one long enough.”
“Get it.”
Another series of splashes sounded, these quieter, but coming steadily closer, as whatever lurked came towards the camp from along the beach.
“There,” Gudrid hissed, pointing down to where an indistinct but large silhouette moved from the edge of the surf to the pasture, and slunk closer.
“What is it?”
“I do not know, but it must be a hunter, as it is not shy about closing in.”
“What is it doing?”
“Watching, I think.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps the smell of the fish attracted it?”
Next came the sounds of timber and rock being pushed aside.
Gudrid stepped out into the night, leaving the tent behind.
Halla followed, raising the flaming torch.
“It has found what it seeks. What is down there besides the salvage we dragged from the sea?”
Halla cursed, “Gods, it will have found Manni and Drifa!”
“No!” Gudrid hissed.
A low and guttural rumble sounded as the beast began tearing at the bodies.
Gudrid continued forward, with the knife held out in front of her. “Is it a wolf or could it be a bear?”
Halla also took another step, but grabbed at Gudrid, “No, you cannot go any farther!”
“We have to stop it.”
Then came more sounds of wet and hungry feeding.
Halla’s eyes dropped down for a moment, to the swell of Gudrid’s belly, before she said, “You stay here; I will go and send it on its way,” but a tremor in her voice betrayed her.
“We will both go, together.”
Halla hesitated, but finally gave a nod.
After a deep breath, they stepped forward.
Slowly, one step after another, they closed on where the beast loomed. While they advanced, the dark silhouette continued to feed, choosing to ignore them.
They closed to within ten paces of it.
The creature finally stopped its meal to lift its head and stare. A rumbling growl rose from deep within its chest. It was a wolf, a powerfully large and ragged beast.
It was hard to see anything in the gloom, apart from its size and the glint of its eyes as they reflected the flame of Halla’s brand.
She moved the torch, lowering it to hold it in front of them. Beside her, Gudrid gripped the knife, both feeling braver for having weapons in their hands.
One thing was certain; the beast had come for meat. The creature tensed, lowering its head as it continued to rumble in anger at the two women for disturbing its bloody feast.
Gudrid cursed, realising that having come so close, they now could not back up. At the very least, they should have brought another burning brand – not merely for light, but also to bolster their meagre armoury.
The wolf blinked, the reflected light of its eyes winking out, then reappearing half a pace away. It happened so quickly, showing Gudrid and Halla that this thing, despite its size, could move with speed.
Side by side, they stood both tense and still.
Halla whispered, “We need the others; we never should have left the tent.”
Gudrid nodded, but neither could take her gaze from the gleaming eyes in front of them.
The reek of one of the bodies reached them, its belly torn open to release the rankness of its guts. Manni, his corpse already missing a limb, had been astink with the richness of blood, drawing the wild beast.
Gudrid looked for any advantage, but only noticed that far out to the east, the horizon sported a rising glow that hinted at the rising moon.
The giant wolf brought its head down and tensed its haunches.
Both Halla and Gudrid sensed the dark beast was about to strike.
A patter then came to them, one with rhythm, as if something rushed along the hilltop to their side. But a rising wind quickly drowned out the new sound.
The breeze whistled as it flew over rocks, danced through pasture, and even worked to take off the tops of waves. A moment later, flaring lightning lit the land, finally revealing their adversary.
Large, but rangy, with a dishevelled, dark coat, the wolf looked half-starved. Most of all, the beast looked desperate.
The dazzling cloud display faded, replaced by the deep crack and rumble of thunder.
Halla started.
Gudrid said, “Be steady; that is Thor’s hammer. The gods are with us.”
“What should we do?”
“We must back away. We have to move slowly and not turn our backs. If we can get to the fire, we can get some more torches that might keep it from coming at us.”
Halla nodded. “Let us try.”
The wolf suddenly turned its head to the side and sniffed the air. A voice came to them at the same time, rising above the wind from the hillside to their right.
“Gudda, Halla, stay still and do not move. Keep your weapons in front of you!” It was Eskil.
Gudrid’s heart fluttered at the sound.
Halla sighed with relief.
From behind them, to their left, perhaps only twenty paces away, another voice called out, “You are not alone; we are here.” It was Ballr.
His voice was followed by others from the hillside – the brothers Steinarr and Samr.
“What should we do?” Gudrid called out.
Eskil answered, “Nothing sudden, let us force it to turn.”
Steinarr said, “I have no axe or blade, as the sea has taken them, but I have plenty of stones.” And, with that, a rock the size of a fist landed between the women and the beast, causing all three to start.
The animal took a step back, its voice rumbling again.
Another stone landed in front of it, followed by one that hit it in the side, and finally one that smacked it squarely on its head.
The great wolf whined as it fell back, skipping to the side. The beast moved away from the bodies to go behind some brush, trying to shelter its too-large form. With a throaty growl, it raised its head and looked for a moment as if it would stand its ground, but another hail of stones came at it, one again hitting it on the head.
The beast yelped, and then turned and ran.
Ballr arrived beside the women, followed by Eskil, as well as Steinarr and Samr. The men let fly with another round of stones as the beast disappeared into the gloom down the beach.
Steinarr growled after it, “Markland is ours, not yours, ragged beast!”
Lightning flashed, and a heartbeat later, a loud clap of thunder hammered the air, as if punctuating the end of the encounter.
Eskil laughed. “A land that is indeed ours, given to us by the gods themselves; first Odin this afternoon, and now Thor, to protect us by calling us together in a moment of need.”
Gudrid smiled. “Godsland it is, and that is what you called it earlier.”
Eskil nodded. “Godsland, indeed.”
Halla turned back to their camp, the tent aglow because of the fire, reminding her of their meal. “Oh, the fish!” She hurried to check on their food.
Gudrid chuckled and followed.
Eskil turned to the other men. “Drifa and Manni will draw back the beast. We need to tend to them now.”
Steinarr offered, “We can bury them with stone. They need a cairn.”
Ballr gave a nod. “You are right that it cannot wait, although it is a shame we lack enough timber to build a pyre. I think that is what they would have preferred.”
Eskil said, “Anything, over flame or under rock, would be better than being feasted upon by that ragged beast.”
The men agreed.
Eskil announced, “We have plenty of rocks, so a cairn is what we will build to mark their passing.”
Torrador and Erik soon returned to join in the toil.
As they worked, gathering loose stones to pile atop the two bodies, Ballr said, “This is no burning ship, nor blazing pyre, but still fitting in its own way, as they shall live on in this new land by joining the soil.”
Eskil nodded. “Those are fine words. Let us hope their burial brings their spirits peace.”
The others agreed.
Before long, it was done.
The men returned to the tent and a meal of fish, which they hungrily devoured. Divided eight ways the food did not stretch far, but it was enough.
After they ate, Steinarr shook out a cloth he had rolled up, its importance clear only when it was unfurled and free. He stood there proudly, letting the firelight show its truth – a black raven, on a blue field – the banner salvaged from their wreck. He announced, “The raven flies over Godsland, having beaten off the wolf!”
A cheer rang around them.
Erik the Dane laughed and offered, “We need something to drink!”
The others murmured in agreement.
Steinarr nodded and offered the banner to Eskil.
Sharing a smile, with Gudrid beside him, Eskil stood and took the banner. “A drink would be good, but that will have to wait for another day. For now, let us celebrate that we sailed under the raven, the symbol of Odin, who delivered us here. We came looking for a new home, one free from the influence of the White Christ and rising kings, and we have found it. Together, we will build a great land to honour him!”
They called out their agreement.
Chapter 3
-
Godsland
Exploration and discovery, under cool and mostly dry skies, filled the next few days. In that time, it seemed the wolf was unwilling to face them again, although they often found fresh signs of its passing. Those days also brought sorrowful moments often paired with hope: The bodies of three more of their crew were found, along with the half-eaten remains of some of their livestock; three drowned and savaged sheep. They also happened upon more salvage, including a chest holding a small iron axe – and that, at least, was welcome.
Much of the debris from their ship was close to the site of their beaching, but the farther west they ranged from the runestone, the better the land. With every step they took from the open sea, the more the low, rock-studded hills, along the windswept and stony coast gained shelter from the nearby islands edging a broad channel that seemed to funnel them towards the fjord’s mouth.
Away from the beach, areas of the hills often revealed sheltered gullies with pastures, streams and even struggling copses of trees. They were unlike the steeper, western shores, where the fjord cut into Markland’s rugged interior. But they were close, and more welcoming than the harsh land about the runestone.
They also noticed how the shore curved around, beginning to head north. Eventually, when another channel ran into the one beside them, they realised they were on a large, sea battered island at the fjord’s mouth. The slopes and vales across the water were tighter and deeper, with occasional woodland-cover. It looked to be not only birch and willow, but also taller timbers such as pine and larch. To see this range of terrain and timber was a comfort, even if it was unreachable – at least for now.
The island promised to be a harsh place. Thin soils hid under the turf, but improved in the gullies, similar to those inland along the fjord. The summer weather was cool, as was the water, but they had expected Greenland and the adjacent new lands to be as such. The long, white winter would be their real challenge. Nonetheless, the vales, woods and pastures they saw about them had potential.
They spent their second night at a more sheltered campsite featuring deep stone overhangs, along one side of a gully, as well as several small caves. Here they feasted on the meat from the sheep carcasses they had recovered, and smoked what they could of the rest.
Eskil spoke as they sat around a noisy fire fed by driftwood and timber gathered from a nearby copse. “It looks as if we have found all we are going to, in the way of survivors and salvage, though we must keep watch for whatever else may come. Yet, a question remains. Should we stay on this island or take to the mainland that from a distance looks promising, with better pastures and thicker woods? If any of you have concerns on this matter, now is the time to voice them.”
No one immediately answered since they were busy with their mutton. In truth, Eskil had planned it that way; he wanted his people to consider their words carefully.
Halla spoke first, not surprising anyone, as she had again worked to cook and serve, and was still cutting her own portion of meat with one of their few blades. “What of the wolf? If we are on the island, then so is the beast.”
Eskil nodded as others murmured their own concerns. After swallowing a mouthful of meat, he said, “The wolf is a danger, I agree. The huge beast looked crazed and half starved. Perhaps it crossed ice to the island during the winter and became stranded at the thaw. Regardless, we will need better weapons, as one wood axe, a few knives and a generous supply of stones may work against the wolf when we are together, but not if any of us are caught out alone. We will have to watch for signs of it, to see if we can find its lair. As for our meagre arms, we need to improve them, since they will not do against the skraelings.”
“Skraelings?” Torrador asked with a frown.
“They may not be on the island, but we know they are in Greenland and also most certainly in Vinland. Some must be nearby, even if they are in the depths of the fjords. Eventually we will run into them.”
Halla finally sat, with her own serving of meat, but instead of eating, she asked, “How would we stand against them?”
“We are too few to wage any meaningful war with them, regardless of how many of them Markland hides. For now, we must be armed and ready as best we can, and that means creating a home we can defend.”
Gudrid spoke up. “Staying on the island may keep them at bay.”
Eskil smiled at her with pride, for she was right. “For a while, at least.”
“Should we work to build a boat and sail for Greenland,” Erik asked, “thus seeking the company of our own kind?”
“They are giving themselves to the White Christ. They are no longer our kind!” Torrador snapped, drawing sharp nods of agreement.
Eskil agreed. “That is reason enough to stay here, on the land Odin chose for us.”
Steinarr sat beside his younger brother, Samr, both men nodding as they ate. The older man swallowed some mutton before saying, “We will need to build a boat in any case – and eventually a ship.”
Gudrid answered him, “Yes, we have the skills, but the tools are gone, stolen away by the sea. We could still build a ship, but such a thing would take more time than we can give it before winter settles in.”
Many of them considered her words before turning to Eskil, who gave a nod. “While we lack the tools to easily make a ship capable of crossing to Greenland or back to Iceland, we will be able to create them in time. We first need a boat for the local waterways. And we need to consider the winter, for it will be long and harsh.”
Steinarr shrugged. “Winter will be hard, but it is almost two full seasons away.”
Gudrid grimaced. “If we had Manni or Leif here with their tools and skills, we might finish a ship over summer, but not by ourselves. It will take longer. At the same time, we will need to be hunting and gathering food, as there is no farm yard here to harvest.”
Eskil nodded, pleased with how sound a thought it was. “Yes, we must consider our other needs as well.”
“We need iron,” Steinarr grumbled. “A few knives and a poor wood axe will win us no skraeling war.”
Erik the Dane agreed. “We will not find iron on this island. In order to make the tools and weapons needed to defend ourselves, we will need to go to the mainland and find a bog that will provide the necessary metal for smelting.” Murmurs of agreement rose from the group.
Eskil announced, “So, Godsland is our home for now.”
Many about the fire nodded.
Gudrid said, “You men have spoken of our need for weapons, and for that I should not be surprised. But we also need to build up a store of foods and better shelter. We arrived here in early summer, so none of us know what the winter will be like; it would be wise to plan for it to be long and hard, perhaps worse than in Iceland. It will be a hungry and barren time. If we do not work on gathering stores now, we will starve before we face any skraelings, despite how many weapons we have.”
The United States of Vinland: The Landing (The Markland Trilogy) (Volume 1) [Paperback]
Book Description
Publication Date: March 13, 2013 | Series: The Markland Trilogy
What if?
What if the descendants of the Vikings who settled Greenland and went on to reach North America around the end of the first millennium had stayed?
Five hundred years later, would Christopher Columbus have arrived to the south of an eastern seaboard dotted with centuries old settlements and towns hosting devotees to Odin and Thor?
Might the Norse have gone on to build a nation as dominant as the United States of our own world?
A thousand years after reaching Greenland, Vinland and Markland, would we still have had two world wars? What might the world look like? Where might the political and religious divides be drawn?
This is the New World.
***
At the turn of the first millennium:
Eskil, orphaned in war, but now a man, is leading his followers to found a settlement in the west dedicated to Odin and Asgard's gods. There he will build a new realm, and after tests, adventures and trials, he will leave a legacy that will grow to be the strongest nation the world has ever seen.
The Landing is the first book in The United States of Vinland series and is an alternate history that begins the saga with the establishment of the first Markland halls. Join the adventure!
Welcome to Norse America.
The United States of Vinland: The Landing
The Markland Trilogy, Volume 1
by Colin Taber
Published by Thought Stream Creative Services, 2013.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 | - | The Landing Squall
Chapter 2 | - | Markland
Chapter 3 | - | Godsland
Chapter 4 | - | The Wolf
Part II
Chapter 5 | - | Smoke
Chapter 6 | - | Lakeland
Chapter 7 | - | Welcomed
Part III
Chapter 8 | - | Spring
Chapter 9 | - | Alfvin
Chapter 10 | - | Ari
Part IV
Chapter 11 | - | The Lonely Vales
Chapter 12 | - | Torrador & Seta
Chapter 13 | - | Back to Lakeland
Chapter 14 | - | A Mournful Cry
Part V
Chapter 15 | - | To Guldale
Chapter 16 | - | The Beach
Epilogue
Epilogue | - | Smoke on the Horizon
Loki’s Rage
The Landing: | A Note From the Author
The Landing: | Characters
The Landing: | Locations & Terms
The Ossard Trilogy
About the Author
For Mum & Dad
Thanks for believing
Thanks for believing
Chapter 1
-
The Landing Squall
All Eskil knew was the smothering chill of the embracing sea. As the waves passed, they rhythmically lifted and lowered him and the broken mast to which he clung. But he was not able to focus on any of that; his body was numb, his thoughts slow and thick.
Death beckoned.
A storm had come from nowhere, to darken the sky and push their two ships off course. Fierce winds and mountainous waves had driven them well away from their Greenland heading, and then, after what seemed an eternity of battling the tempest, both had stolen the other ship out of sight. At that point, with a prayer to Odin, Eskil could only focus on his own ship and people.
They struggled with exhaustion, until their limbs ached, hoping to handle the protesting ship through the heaving seas. But it was finally swamped by a monstrous wave. His last memories of the chaos were of his crew’s desperate attempts to hold the craft together, until a final wall of brine had come to tear it all apart. Eskil found himself alone in the water, not remembering where he had last seen his expecting wife, Gudrid.
The worst of the weather then dissipated, as if its job was complete.
To lose out at the end of such an elemental fight was maddening, but rage was an emotion Eskil could no longer conjure. Not now, for he was drained and battered, overcome by the chill of the sea.
He knew it would not be long before the cold would claim him, stealing his last breath as it kissed his shivering lips.
He dimly noted the clouds beginning to break up, although the rain continued. Such a thing at least declared that the storm was well and truly past.
Maybe it was a victory of sorts that he had survived such a vile tempest.
He clung to the ruin of the ship’s mast and sail, still bound to the rigging, the best manoeuvre he had been able to manage after finding himself in the sea. Once secured, he had begun calling out, seeking his beloved Gudrid. But because of the continuing rain, he had neither seen nor heard her or any of the others.
Bound to the floating timbers, he was relatively safe from the threat of the sea finding his lungs, although it left him with only one other task – trying to stay awake. If he did not, he would die. He knew the icy water was far more likely to kill him than anything else.
He seemed otherwise alone, if not for the ship’s ruin, the soft call of the wind, and the grey curtain of rain.
Eskil faded, his fatigue rising to overwhelm him, as the rhythmic motion of the waves continued to gently lift and drop him. Around him the wind droned on and the rain eased.
Jerking awake, thus setting his sodden blonde hair to flick about his face, Eskil realised he had blacked out for a moment, or perhaps longer; he was not certain. He tried to curse, but his voice failed him, coming out as a shivering rasp. He should have been frightened, but instead lay his forehead back down against the timber of the mast.
A feeling stirred in him; perhaps his spirit was trying to rally whatever remained. Finally roused, he hissed out across the waves, “Odin, help me! Take me to this new land you have led me to seek!”
There was no answer.
Eskil’s grip began to slacken and his mind began to fall to grim and dark thoughts.
Then he heard a sound, a sound not of the wind or the waves, or even of the gods. The noise grabbed his attention.
What could it be?
It sounded again: the call of a bird, the caw of a raven.
A raven meant land!
He fought to awaken himself, to focus, as he tightened his grip.
The raven sounded again, this time joined by another’s call.
Land!
And then, after that sweet chorus, came the crash of rolling surf.
Land was near!
He lifted his head to look about, seeing nothing but the tight, blue-grey valleys of water between the passing waves. Once it moved on, he roused in time to make a new discovery: beneath the waterline, his numb feet briefly stirred gravel as they dragged along the seabed.
Shallows!
He looked past the mast and tangled lines, and the cloth of the ship’s sail in front of him, to the overcast western sky, where the grey shroud of rain was brighter because it hid the sun.
To the west, where yet more land was reputed to be.
His feet then found the shallows again.
While still hugging the mast and up to his neck in the chilled sea, Eskil took a step forward, only to find yet more rising seabed.
The curtain of rain continued to fade, revealing huge but distant silhouettes. The dark, steep-sided forms loomed as if they mouthed a great fjord. With each moment, more land became visible, in shades of grey, as a rugged coastline opened up in front of him.
“By Odin!” he whispered through chattering teeth.
Eskil took another step on the stones of the seabed, only to find the water so shallow that he stumbled to his knees. His spirit soared as he worked with numb and awkward fingers to untangle himself from the rigging that had bound him to the mast. Finally breaking free, he rose and stepped forward as he sought to escape the water.
He would live!
He looked at the land emerging from the receding drizzle as he stumbled forward. His mind, still half lost, began to stir, but for now he noted the green of grass and grey of rock ahead; he realized he remained alone. Gazing up and down the shoreline, he searched for a sign that the others had also made it to land.
Anyone, but most especially his Gudrid!
The thought overcame him, setting him to shake and shiver as he staggered out of the foaming surf. He had promised his thirty followers a new life of land and freedom, a life away from the rising kings and the creeping influence of the White Christ.
They would only honour the old gods!
Just ahead of him, the rocky shore ascended to a narrow pasture, a few shrubs and a tumble of larger stones before the side of a low green hill began. The steeper entry into the fjord rose farther along the shore as it ran away to meet with other valleys. Yet, much remained lost in the colourless haze of drizzle.
After a few more exhausted steps, he was out of the water, across the stony shore, and onto the pasture.
He dropped to his knees.
Here he was alone in the wilds, lost on the rugged shores of Markland, or another place beyond Greenland.
But he had survived!
Behind him, debris from the ship washed up, stranded next to a large, already-beached section of the hull. He could also see one of his people bobbing face down in the water.
He got up and stumbled back to the surf, reaching Drifa’s body. He pulled her up to the gravel – but to no avail – she was still and dead.
“Damn you, Odin,” he growled, “I was doing this for you! To bring your faith to a new land, away from those who have turned from your might!” Exhausted, verging on delirium, he collapsed onto the rocks leading up to the pasture, his spirit all but broken. “You led me here, you whispered to me in my dreams of a westerly land that I should seek. Well, I did as you directed; now I am here!”
And then the wind died, as the last of the squall’s clouds and rain parted, allowing the mid-afternoon sun to shine down from over the distant heart of the fjord. The light washed over him, golden, generous and warm.
Eskil slowly rose back to his feet as he called out, “Odin, give me this land and I shall give it back to you a thousand-fold!”
A raven called, drawing his attention.
Amidst the golden glare, briefly highlighted by the departing showers, Eskil saw a raven perched on a tall stone rising straight and true by the tumbled boulders at the base of the hill.
He stepped forward, drawn to it.
The raven watched his approach.
He slowed, with each step, not believing what he saw: a stone, taller than a man, marked by the runes of his people.
The runes read: "The Landing".
“By the gods!”
He then heard another voice, the sound of which made his heart jump.
“Eskil?” It was his wife, Gudrid.
He looked down at the base of the standing stone and noticed wet cloth on the grass, trailing away behind it. Putting a hand to the runestone, he leaned on it for support as he stepped around it, holding his breath.
There she sat, with her back to the stone, her woollens still damp from the sea, but lit by the warm sunlight. Already her long blonde hair was mostly dry.
“Gudda!” he whispered in disbelief, using his pet name for her.
She looked up to him, her hands over the small bulge of her expectant belly, her blue eyes sparkling with relief. “Oh, Eskil!”
He dropped to his knees beside her and took her into his arms.
“I thought I had lost you!”
“And I you. But Odin has spared us.” Pulling away from her, he surveyed the green slopes of the hill in front of them and then turned to the steep sides and rocky crests at the entry to the fjord rising farther down the coast. “He has brought us here.”
“But where are we?”
“I’m not sure, perhaps Markland.”
“Markland?”
“I think we passed Greenland.” He pointed to the distant fjord. “And I can see thickets of trees farther down the sound. They might simply be willow and birch, but others will be deeper inland, where they are better sheltered from the fury of the sea. Markland is named after the trees.”
“Markland?” she whispered again.
“Yes. The sailors in Iceland described it as a rugged and harsh land said to be beyond Greenland, but a place with more timber.”
They both turned to take in the view – low green hills behind the beach, running west onto a deep and wide sound along the coast. The steep sides of the fjord rose in the far distance, occasionally edged by narrow, sun-warmed pastures. Glimpses of waterfalls spilled down like white ribbons between exposed rocks and thin woodlands. By the golden light of a summer afternoon, Markland seemed a land of rugged beauty and promise.
Eskil stood and offered his hand to Gudrid; she took it and rose. “Are you hurt?”
She smiled. “Merely tired and cold, although I feel sickly.” One of her hands went to her belly again as she spoke, “I think I swallowed a lot of seawater.”
He nodded as he put an arm about her. “And how long have you been here, sitting against this runestone?”
They both turned to examine the etchings, the raven watching them from above.
“Not long, although to be truthful, I find it hard to think of how it all came about. I grabbed at some wood from the ship and was brought here by the waves. I do not think I was in the water for long, and I did not realise this stone was special until now. I simply came ashore and sought to escape the last of the rain and wind.”
Eskil ran his hand over the stone’s weathered face, his fingers tracing over the rough runes. The stone faced out towards the open sea as a marker.
The raven watched them for a moment, and then jumped into the air, spreading its black wings. The bird flew above their heads and dove down towards the shore. It did not land, instead gliding to pass over the breaking waves. The raven then rose again and turned to land on the broken timbers of the beached hull lying in the shallows. It looked back at them and cried out.
The wet sounds of splashing came to Eskil and Gudrid as something stirred the water nearby. Another part of the ruined ship drifted into view. A small, partially hidden section of timbers emerged from behind the bulk of the beached hull the raven was using as a perch.
Eskil and Gudrid could see three of their people clinging to the timbers as they tried to get to shore, their kicks and strokes heavy with exhaustion.
“Quickly!” Eskil called out as he led Gudrid racing down to the water, wading into the chilly surf to reach them.
They grabbed the three men, one by one, and dragged them to the gravel beach.
The men collapsed. Torrador coughed up water while the blonde brothers, Steinarr and Samr, both gasped for breath.
The raven called out again before leaving the hull, flying up and over them. It turned and dove again, down towards the breakers, as it headed along the shallows and towards the distant fjord. With another call, it flew towards the glare of the sun, but not before drawing Gudrid’s attention up the beach.
Two figures, silhouettes against the golden glare, waved as they staggered towards them.
“More of our people!” Gudrid exclaimed as she left Eskil with the recovering men.
Torrador began a fresh round of choking and retching, ending with a hoarse gasp. “By Odin, thank you, Eskil!”
Eskil knelt beside the big man, relieved to hear his voice. “Only concentrate on getting the sea out and some air in.” He patted the big man firmly on the back, setting his brown hair to jiggle.
Beside them, Steinarr was now on all fours, as was Samr, who was trying to rise.
Gudrid called from down the beach. “Erik is over here!”
Eskil watched the silhouette of the Dane as he crawled from the water, amongst the bobbing timbers and other debris from their ship.
She went to the wretching man who was slumped onto the gravel. As he gathered himself, she called back to Eskil and the others, “There is much here we can use, including the rigging and sail.”
Eskil patted Torrador on the back again as he looked at his wife and whispered, “Thank you, Odin.”
Gudrid remained with Erik as he recovered.
Beyond her, a man and woman approached from down the beach, both moving heavily with fatigue.
Before turning to face the newcomers, she called back to Eskil, “Get the wood and rope, and the sail as well. We will need it for shelter.”
Torrador paused in his recovery and let out a chuckle, despite trying to stifle his mirth in case he embarrassed his leader.
Eskil grinned. That was his Gudda; she was never shy in voicing her opinion. He stood and said, “Come, she talks to you, too!” He glanced at the other men and added, “Steinarr and Samr, we have work to do!”
His friends, coughing to clear their lungs, did as bidden and got to their feet. The four of them began grabbing at any useful debris they found in the surf, pulling it up onto the beach.
Gudrid moved on and met the other survivors, bringing them back to Erik.
Eskil could see it was the Icelandic couple, Ballr and Halla. He liked them; Ballr was a resourceful and trustworthy man.
When Erik the Dane recovered and was on his feet, Gudrid sent him and the Icelanders back to Eskil, as she continued to walk along the beach, looking for more survivors and salvage. Occasionally, she would turn and call back, telling of particular items washed up on shore. After a good while, she turned and made her way back to them, holding a box in her arms.
The survivors reunited; Gudrid returned to Eskil, Torrador and Erik, the brothers Steinarr and young Samr, and Ballr and his wife, Halla. As the afternoon waned, they also collected much of the salvage and began sorting it into piles on the pasture. At one end of their work lay Drifa, her body waiting for their tending.
Eskil looked at his wife, her face now pale, as she cradled the small and familiar wooden box in her arms. “Come, my Gudda, you have done well, but you are exhausting yourself.”
“I shall be alright.”
“No, come and let me sit you back in the sun, against the runestone.”
“There is so much to be done.”
“You can direct us from the runestone, and you can even grumble at me if you like when I do it all wrong, but I will not have you risking your health and that of our unborn.” He led her back up the gravel beach and onto the green pasture before reaching the runestone.
“What of Drifa? She must be put to rest.”
“We will tend to her, but first we must get the salvage before the tide takes it away.”
She nodded, accepting his wisdom.
He added, “We also need to get a shelter up while we have light.”
“Yes; the needs of the living first.”
Helping her down, he knelt beside her. “We will set Drifa to rest when our work is done, after sunset if we must.”
She nodded. “Where will we build?”
“Here.”
“It is too exposed.”
“Yes, but it will do for now. Tomorrow we will look for a better site.”
She gave a weak nod and leaned back against the runestone. “If you build it here, use the stone: It called us here.”
He nodded. “I was going to. Now rest.”
“Eskil?” Her eyes were growing heavy, the lids drooping as she tried to make one last command.
“Yes, my wife?”
She weakly offered the wooden box up to him. “I found these; put them in pride of place, as they are what kept us safe.”
He took the offered box, handling it with care, as it had been handed-down to her by her mother. He unlatched the lid and looked inside, checking that the wood-carved statuettes of the gods remained intact. “I will, my wife, for the gods brought us here after testing us.”
“Yes, to here; to a gods’ land.”
“Yes, to Godsland.”
She nodded and then let her eyes close as she sought sleep.
Gudrid slept, weary first from her own near drowning, and then from her efforts to revive friends and crew. In a slumber bathed in the glow of the afternoon’s summer sun, she dreamt of her babe due to be born in autumn, feeling the innocent’s eagerness to come into this new world. She found comfort in those dreams, watching her child grow in both wisdom and strength. In them, she witnessed a son’s coming of age, of his own fatherhood, and of him finally leading the people of Markland into a grand, god-gifted age.
Here, by the runestone, they would birth a mighty future!
Chapter 2
-
Markland
While Gudrid slept, the men fashioned a simple tent from salvaged rigging, timber and sailcloth. The shelter, pitched at the runestone, was basic, but it would do.
When Gudrid awoke, it was to find her new world falling into twilight, the distant view one of silhouettes and gloom. A good fire burned half-a-dozen paces away, at the edge of the tumbled rocks, much of its light and warmth reaching her while also illuminating the rising hillside behind. The flames’ flickering light also reached the pasture that separated them from the gravel beach. Scattered across the space were piles of salvage – mostly bits of timber, some cloth, rope and other items – all of it helpful, if but basic. A few baskets and three small chests were stacked aside of this. Gudrid felt great relief to see them, for in them should be a mix of blades, tools and seed stock.
Eskil stepped out of the shadows, his stride purposeful as he came to kneel beside her. “How are you?”
She smiled. “Well.”
He took her hands and cupped them in his own. “We have finished the shelter and Halla is preparing some fish.”
“Are we safe?”
“Not from the weather, no; not as safe as I would like us to be. A wind is blowing up and more clouds are appearing, but at sunset, it did not look too bad. We should be alright for one night.”
She asked, “And what of the skraelings?” All of them knew of the tales to come out of Greenland; they had heard of them in Iceland before sailing, of new lands and new peoples.
“We have seen no one. I have sent Steinarr and Samr to walk the beaches and climb the nearest hills. They will be back soon to tell us what they have seen.” He looked out into the dusk. “Or they should be; I need to check on them.”
“And what of the others we dragged from the sea?”
“They are alright, but busy with tasks.”
As he spoke, Halla appeared out of the darkness and walked with a basket in hand. She turned to Gudrid, smiling to see her awake. “I am here if you need anything.”
Gudrid gave a grateful nod and then turned back to Eskil as he continued, “We have also found a few tools and gear amongst the timber salvage, as well as some clothes, cloth and rope. The real problem is that we are mostly unarmed, without any means of going back to sea. I think we will be staying here.”
“That might not be so bad.”
He nodded, but his jaw firmed; he was holding something back.
“What is wrong?”
He grimaced before answering, “We found one of the men, dead.”
“Who?”
“Manni.”
She nodded.
“He was missing a leg, gone just over the knee. A bite was taken out of him.”
“A serpent?”
“I suppose; the lesson is we should be wary of the water.”
She nodded again. “And what of the others?”
“No sign, not yet. Nor any of Leif’s ship.”
She pursed her lips. “Perhaps they have also survived?”
“It is possible, but more likely the sea has taken them.”
“We need him and his people.”
Eskil nodded. “He is a good man, the kind you want by your side.” He shivered, thinking back to how close he had also come to death. “Yes.” He considered his next words before continuing, “We were all lucky. We should be dead.”
“Yet here we are, at the foot of a runestone?”
“It seems the gods wanted us spared.”
She nodded.
“Come, let us get you into the tent. The air is getting cold.” He helped her up and then led her around the runestone and into the shelter, the structure aglow by a small fire within.
Halla was inside tending the fire, a basket by her side.
Eskil said, “I need to check on the others. I will be back soon.” He turned and walked out into the deepening night.
Gudrid overheard Torrador ask Eskil after her health.
Her husband answered him, before asking, “What of Steinarr and Samr?”
“The brothers have gone onto the stream to get some water. The others should also be back soon.”
As Gudrid listened, she realised she had missed out on yet more discoveries. The thought faded though, quickly lost to the smell of cooking fish.
Halla said, “Gudrid, just get comfortable, the fish will be ready soon enough.”
“Who caught the fish?”
“Me, would you believe? I caught them myself!”
“Really?” Gudrid laughed as she stepped towards the Icelander, ready to help, and to also share the fire’s heat.
“I saw some of our baskets floating in the surf, swamped by the waves. When I went to fetch them, I discovered two fish trapped inside one of them.”
Gudrid laughed as she looked down at the fire, the low flames held within a skirting circle of rocks. Two gutted fish lay to the side, spread across a flat stone, surrounded by glowing coals. “You are a fine fisherwoman!”
“A good piece of luck.”
“Or a gift?”
Halla gave a nod before turning back to check on the fish. “We have received more than one gift. Every one of us is alive because the gods want us to be.”
Gudrid nodded.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired, but better, and hungry, after smelling your fish.”
Halla sighed. “If only there was more to eat!”
“Do not fret.”
“And what of this place; Markland, your Eskil calls it? It is not far removed from Vinland, and it is also bound to harbour skraelings.”
“We will simply have to see. We are camping by a runestone, a marker carved by our own kind. This place is already given; not to the skraelings, but to our own people.”
Halla smiled. “Do you think they are here?”
“Our own kind?”
“Yes.”
“They have at least passed through, and most likely would not have carved a runestone if they were just exploring. Maybe farms are farther up the fjord, or maybe they come here in the summer, perhaps for furs or iron, or maybe even timber. Greenland is supposedly not rich in any of those things.”
“Yes, that is why they were supposedly excited about Vinland.”
Gudrid went on, “Let us hope the others are back soon so we can eat. It will be good to bed down for what at least will be a dry night, better than what the storm gave us.”
Halla looked out into the night, through a gap in the sail. A weak breeze stirred, its song backed by the regular crash of surf. “Yes, a dry night and, thanks be to Freya, one during which we will be warm and sheltered. But we will need to head farther up the fjord tomorrow and seek a better place.”
“Have Drifa and Manni been tended to?”
“No, we ran out of light. We laid them out just beyond the salvage. I think the men mean to deal with them soon.”
Gudrid turned her back to the fire to feel its warmth. “And where are the others?”
“They are checking over what has washed up. With the light nearly gone, they all shall be back soon enough.”
Gudrid hoped so.
The weak wind died at last, bringing an almost complete silence to the night. The fire crackled occasionally, but the crash of the surf, as the low waves came to skirmish with the rocks and gravel of the shoreline, was the only other sound.
The world seemed to slip into a sleepier calm, but the silent women were suddenly roused by a slapping thud from somewhere in the gloom.
They tensed and turned to the dark beyond the tent’s opening.
“What was that?” Halla asked.
Gudrid stepped across to look outside, trying to make out what might cause such a sound. She wondered; perhaps a boulder coming to rest after it rolled down the hill that climbed up over the beach? Or perhaps the landing of a beast after bounding down from the same hillside?
With a soft voice, Halla asked, “Can you see anything down along the beach?”
“No.”
Halla stepped across to join her.
Both women stared out into the night.
The light was weak as dusk faded away. They could discern little, with any certainty, particularly on an unfamiliar shoreline littered with rocks, piles of salvage, and other shadowed shapes, either real or imagined.
From the rhythm of crashing waves came a sudden splash at the water’s edge, about sixty paces away, a sound so stark that Halla gave out a gasp. “Something is there!”
Gudrid silenced her with a hand. “Hush, Halla. Do we have any weapons?”
“Only the fire and a small knife...I have the blade here.” She was clutching it tightly in her white-knuckled fist, the blade still slick from gutting the fish.
“Give it to me.”
Halla passed it across, releasing the blade from her shaking grip.
Staring into the night, Gudrid asked, “Can you lift any brands from the fire?”
“There is one long enough.”
“Get it.”
Another series of splashes sounded, these quieter, but coming steadily closer, as whatever lurked came towards the camp from along the beach.
“There,” Gudrid hissed, pointing down to where an indistinct but large silhouette moved from the edge of the surf to the pasture, and slunk closer.
“What is it?”
“I do not know, but it must be a hunter, as it is not shy about closing in.”
“What is it doing?”
“Watching, I think.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps the smell of the fish attracted it?”
Next came the sounds of timber and rock being pushed aside.
Gudrid stepped out into the night, leaving the tent behind.
Halla followed, raising the flaming torch.
“It has found what it seeks. What is down there besides the salvage we dragged from the sea?”
Halla cursed, “Gods, it will have found Manni and Drifa!”
“No!” Gudrid hissed.
A low and guttural rumble sounded as the beast began tearing at the bodies.
Gudrid continued forward, with the knife held out in front of her. “Is it a wolf or could it be a bear?”
Halla also took another step, but grabbed at Gudrid, “No, you cannot go any farther!”
“We have to stop it.”
Then came more sounds of wet and hungry feeding.
Halla’s eyes dropped down for a moment, to the swell of Gudrid’s belly, before she said, “You stay here; I will go and send it on its way,” but a tremor in her voice betrayed her.
“We will both go, together.”
Halla hesitated, but finally gave a nod.
After a deep breath, they stepped forward.
Slowly, one step after another, they closed on where the beast loomed. While they advanced, the dark silhouette continued to feed, choosing to ignore them.
They closed to within ten paces of it.
The creature finally stopped its meal to lift its head and stare. A rumbling growl rose from deep within its chest. It was a wolf, a powerfully large and ragged beast.
It was hard to see anything in the gloom, apart from its size and the glint of its eyes as they reflected the flame of Halla’s brand.
She moved the torch, lowering it to hold it in front of them. Beside her, Gudrid gripped the knife, both feeling braver for having weapons in their hands.
One thing was certain; the beast had come for meat. The creature tensed, lowering its head as it continued to rumble in anger at the two women for disturbing its bloody feast.
Gudrid cursed, realising that having come so close, they now could not back up. At the very least, they should have brought another burning brand – not merely for light, but also to bolster their meagre armoury.
The wolf blinked, the reflected light of its eyes winking out, then reappearing half a pace away. It happened so quickly, showing Gudrid and Halla that this thing, despite its size, could move with speed.
Side by side, they stood both tense and still.
Halla whispered, “We need the others; we never should have left the tent.”
Gudrid nodded, but neither could take her gaze from the gleaming eyes in front of them.
The reek of one of the bodies reached them, its belly torn open to release the rankness of its guts. Manni, his corpse already missing a limb, had been astink with the richness of blood, drawing the wild beast.
Gudrid looked for any advantage, but only noticed that far out to the east, the horizon sported a rising glow that hinted at the rising moon.
The giant wolf brought its head down and tensed its haunches.
Both Halla and Gudrid sensed the dark beast was about to strike.
A patter then came to them, one with rhythm, as if something rushed along the hilltop to their side. But a rising wind quickly drowned out the new sound.
The breeze whistled as it flew over rocks, danced through pasture, and even worked to take off the tops of waves. A moment later, flaring lightning lit the land, finally revealing their adversary.
Large, but rangy, with a dishevelled, dark coat, the wolf looked half-starved. Most of all, the beast looked desperate.
The dazzling cloud display faded, replaced by the deep crack and rumble of thunder.
Halla started.
Gudrid said, “Be steady; that is Thor’s hammer. The gods are with us.”
“What should we do?”
“We must back away. We have to move slowly and not turn our backs. If we can get to the fire, we can get some more torches that might keep it from coming at us.”
Halla nodded. “Let us try.”
The wolf suddenly turned its head to the side and sniffed the air. A voice came to them at the same time, rising above the wind from the hillside to their right.
“Gudda, Halla, stay still and do not move. Keep your weapons in front of you!” It was Eskil.
Gudrid’s heart fluttered at the sound.
Halla sighed with relief.
From behind them, to their left, perhaps only twenty paces away, another voice called out, “You are not alone; we are here.” It was Ballr.
His voice was followed by others from the hillside – the brothers Steinarr and Samr.
“What should we do?” Gudrid called out.
Eskil answered, “Nothing sudden, let us force it to turn.”
Steinarr said, “I have no axe or blade, as the sea has taken them, but I have plenty of stones.” And, with that, a rock the size of a fist landed between the women and the beast, causing all three to start.
The animal took a step back, its voice rumbling again.
Another stone landed in front of it, followed by one that hit it in the side, and finally one that smacked it squarely on its head.
The great wolf whined as it fell back, skipping to the side. The beast moved away from the bodies to go behind some brush, trying to shelter its too-large form. With a throaty growl, it raised its head and looked for a moment as if it would stand its ground, but another hail of stones came at it, one again hitting it on the head.
The beast yelped, and then turned and ran.
Ballr arrived beside the women, followed by Eskil, as well as Steinarr and Samr. The men let fly with another round of stones as the beast disappeared into the gloom down the beach.
Steinarr growled after it, “Markland is ours, not yours, ragged beast!”
Lightning flashed, and a heartbeat later, a loud clap of thunder hammered the air, as if punctuating the end of the encounter.
Eskil laughed. “A land that is indeed ours, given to us by the gods themselves; first Odin this afternoon, and now Thor, to protect us by calling us together in a moment of need.”
Gudrid smiled. “Godsland it is, and that is what you called it earlier.”
Eskil nodded. “Godsland, indeed.”
Halla turned back to their camp, the tent aglow because of the fire, reminding her of their meal. “Oh, the fish!” She hurried to check on their food.
Gudrid chuckled and followed.
Eskil turned to the other men. “Drifa and Manni will draw back the beast. We need to tend to them now.”
Steinarr offered, “We can bury them with stone. They need a cairn.”
Ballr gave a nod. “You are right that it cannot wait, although it is a shame we lack enough timber to build a pyre. I think that is what they would have preferred.”
Eskil said, “Anything, over flame or under rock, would be better than being feasted upon by that ragged beast.”
The men agreed.
Eskil announced, “We have plenty of rocks, so a cairn is what we will build to mark their passing.”
Torrador and Erik soon returned to join in the toil.
As they worked, gathering loose stones to pile atop the two bodies, Ballr said, “This is no burning ship, nor blazing pyre, but still fitting in its own way, as they shall live on in this new land by joining the soil.”
Eskil nodded. “Those are fine words. Let us hope their burial brings their spirits peace.”
The others agreed.
Before long, it was done.
The men returned to the tent and a meal of fish, which they hungrily devoured. Divided eight ways the food did not stretch far, but it was enough.
After they ate, Steinarr shook out a cloth he had rolled up, its importance clear only when it was unfurled and free. He stood there proudly, letting the firelight show its truth – a black raven, on a blue field – the banner salvaged from their wreck. He announced, “The raven flies over Godsland, having beaten off the wolf!”
A cheer rang around them.
Erik the Dane laughed and offered, “We need something to drink!”
The others murmured in agreement.
Steinarr nodded and offered the banner to Eskil.
Sharing a smile, with Gudrid beside him, Eskil stood and took the banner. “A drink would be good, but that will have to wait for another day. For now, let us celebrate that we sailed under the raven, the symbol of Odin, who delivered us here. We came looking for a new home, one free from the influence of the White Christ and rising kings, and we have found it. Together, we will build a great land to honour him!”
They called out their agreement.
Chapter 3
-
Godsland
Exploration and discovery, under cool and mostly dry skies, filled the next few days. In that time, it seemed the wolf was unwilling to face them again, although they often found fresh signs of its passing. Those days also brought sorrowful moments often paired with hope: The bodies of three more of their crew were found, along with the half-eaten remains of some of their livestock; three drowned and savaged sheep. They also happened upon more salvage, including a chest holding a small iron axe – and that, at least, was welcome.
Much of the debris from their ship was close to the site of their beaching, but the farther west they ranged from the runestone, the better the land. With every step they took from the open sea, the more the low, rock-studded hills, along the windswept and stony coast gained shelter from the nearby islands edging a broad channel that seemed to funnel them towards the fjord’s mouth.
Away from the beach, areas of the hills often revealed sheltered gullies with pastures, streams and even struggling copses of trees. They were unlike the steeper, western shores, where the fjord cut into Markland’s rugged interior. But they were close, and more welcoming than the harsh land about the runestone.
They also noticed how the shore curved around, beginning to head north. Eventually, when another channel ran into the one beside them, they realised they were on a large, sea battered island at the fjord’s mouth. The slopes and vales across the water were tighter and deeper, with occasional woodland-cover. It looked to be not only birch and willow, but also taller timbers such as pine and larch. To see this range of terrain and timber was a comfort, even if it was unreachable – at least for now.
The island promised to be a harsh place. Thin soils hid under the turf, but improved in the gullies, similar to those inland along the fjord. The summer weather was cool, as was the water, but they had expected Greenland and the adjacent new lands to be as such. The long, white winter would be their real challenge. Nonetheless, the vales, woods and pastures they saw about them had potential.
They spent their second night at a more sheltered campsite featuring deep stone overhangs, along one side of a gully, as well as several small caves. Here they feasted on the meat from the sheep carcasses they had recovered, and smoked what they could of the rest.
Eskil spoke as they sat around a noisy fire fed by driftwood and timber gathered from a nearby copse. “It looks as if we have found all we are going to, in the way of survivors and salvage, though we must keep watch for whatever else may come. Yet, a question remains. Should we stay on this island or take to the mainland that from a distance looks promising, with better pastures and thicker woods? If any of you have concerns on this matter, now is the time to voice them.”
No one immediately answered since they were busy with their mutton. In truth, Eskil had planned it that way; he wanted his people to consider their words carefully.
Halla spoke first, not surprising anyone, as she had again worked to cook and serve, and was still cutting her own portion of meat with one of their few blades. “What of the wolf? If we are on the island, then so is the beast.”
Eskil nodded as others murmured their own concerns. After swallowing a mouthful of meat, he said, “The wolf is a danger, I agree. The huge beast looked crazed and half starved. Perhaps it crossed ice to the island during the winter and became stranded at the thaw. Regardless, we will need better weapons, as one wood axe, a few knives and a generous supply of stones may work against the wolf when we are together, but not if any of us are caught out alone. We will have to watch for signs of it, to see if we can find its lair. As for our meagre arms, we need to improve them, since they will not do against the skraelings.”
“Skraelings?” Torrador asked with a frown.
“They may not be on the island, but we know they are in Greenland and also most certainly in Vinland. Some must be nearby, even if they are in the depths of the fjords. Eventually we will run into them.”
Halla finally sat, with her own serving of meat, but instead of eating, she asked, “How would we stand against them?”
“We are too few to wage any meaningful war with them, regardless of how many of them Markland hides. For now, we must be armed and ready as best we can, and that means creating a home we can defend.”
Gudrid spoke up. “Staying on the island may keep them at bay.”
Eskil smiled at her with pride, for she was right. “For a while, at least.”
“Should we work to build a boat and sail for Greenland,” Erik asked, “thus seeking the company of our own kind?”
“They are giving themselves to the White Christ. They are no longer our kind!” Torrador snapped, drawing sharp nods of agreement.
Eskil agreed. “That is reason enough to stay here, on the land Odin chose for us.”
Steinarr sat beside his younger brother, Samr, both men nodding as they ate. The older man swallowed some mutton before saying, “We will need to build a boat in any case – and eventually a ship.”
Gudrid answered him, “Yes, we have the skills, but the tools are gone, stolen away by the sea. We could still build a ship, but such a thing would take more time than we can give it before winter settles in.”
Many of them considered her words before turning to Eskil, who gave a nod. “While we lack the tools to easily make a ship capable of crossing to Greenland or back to Iceland, we will be able to create them in time. We first need a boat for the local waterways. And we need to consider the winter, for it will be long and harsh.”
Steinarr shrugged. “Winter will be hard, but it is almost two full seasons away.”
Gudrid grimaced. “If we had Manni or Leif here with their tools and skills, we might finish a ship over summer, but not by ourselves. It will take longer. At the same time, we will need to be hunting and gathering food, as there is no farm yard here to harvest.”
Eskil nodded, pleased with how sound a thought it was. “Yes, we must consider our other needs as well.”
“We need iron,” Steinarr grumbled. “A few knives and a poor wood axe will win us no skraeling war.”
Erik the Dane agreed. “We will not find iron on this island. In order to make the tools and weapons needed to defend ourselves, we will need to go to the mainland and find a bog that will provide the necessary metal for smelting.” Murmurs of agreement rose from the group.
Eskil announced, “So, Godsland is our home for now.”
Many about the fire nodded.
Gudrid said, “You men have spoken of our need for weapons, and for that I should not be surprised. But we also need to build up a store of foods and better shelter. We arrived here in early summer, so none of us know what the winter will be like; it would be wise to plan for it to be long and hard, perhaps worse than in Iceland. It will be a hungry and barren time. If we do not work on gathering stores now, we will starve before we face any skraelings, despite how many weapons we have.”