2034: A Novel of the Next World War(49)

    21:02 June 26, 2034 (GMT+8)

300 nautical miles off the coast of Zhanjiang

The internet was out across the entire eastern seaboard. Eighty percent of the connectivity in the Midwest was gone. Connectivity on the West Coast had been reduced by 50 percent.

A nationwide power outage.

The airports closed.

The markets panicked.

Hunt listened to the updates arriving via the BBC World Service on the handheld radio Quint had given her. She immediately understood the implications. She scrambled down four levels to the radio room, where Quint was also listening to the news and awaiting her.

“Anything yet?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

Hooper wasn’t there, he was asleep in the berthing, and Hunt was glad it was only her and the old chief. She knew the message she was waiting for, and she felt as though she wanted the fewest people possible around when it arrived. The idea of receiving her task in front of someone from a younger generation, like Hooper, felt particularly difficult. Perhaps this was because he would have to live with the consequences longer than any of them. This was Hunt’s train of thought as she sat in the cramped radio room with Quint, the two of them listening to static on the HF radio set, waiting.

And then the message arrived.



* * *





    10:47 June 26, 2034 (GMT-4)

Washington, D.C.

Chowdhury wasn’t in the room when they made the decision. To assuage his guilt about what followed, he would always cling to that fact. In the years to come he would have ample opportunity to imagine the discussion around the Situation Room conference table beneath the dim generator-powered lights. He would imagine the positions taken by Trent Wisecarver, by the various service chiefs and cabinet secretaries, the tabulations of arguments for or against what they were about to do—what they had all committed themselves to do when the president had put down her “red line” and dared her counterparts in Beijing to cross it.

Which was what it seemed Beijing had now done, though not in the way anyone had anticipated. The cutting of the undersea cables and the resulting plunge into darkness was the demonstrable fact that, when discussed around the conference table, proved Beijing had crossed the red line. The question was the response. And even that was settled in remarkably short order. Chowdhury envisioned the scene—a disquisition of US interests by Wisecarver, followed by a range of options (or lack thereof) presented by the Joint Chiefs, and then formal nuclear authorizations being granted by the president herself. Chowdhury didn’t need to imagine any more than that because he had seen the principals as they exited into the West Wing, their dour expressions failing to contain the knowledge of the decision they had settled upon, even though they themselves didn’t yet understand past intellectualization the destruction they would unleash. How could they?

With the orders dispatched, Wisecarver set up a duty rotation among the national security staff and Chowdhury was sent home, to return the following morning. He expected the strike to occur sometime in the night. There would, of course, be a response from Beijing. And the national security staff needed to be ready for it. On Chowdhury’s drive home, entire blocks were still without power. Only about half the traffic lights in the city worked; the other half were blacked out or shuffling their colors nonsensically onto empty streets. In only a few more days, the trash would begin to pile up. When he tuned in to his favorite radio station he was met with static.

So he drove in silence.

And he thought.

He thought the same thought all through that night—as he ate dinner with his mother and Ashni, as he carried the girl up to bed with her arms looped heavily around his neck like two ropes, and as he wished his mother good night in the guest room and she kissed him, uncharacteristically, on the forehead and then touched his cheek with her cupped palm as she hadn’t done in years, not since his divorce. The thought was this: I have to get my family somewhere safe.

Chowdhury knew where that place was. It wasn’t a bomb shelter (if those even existed anymore), or outside of the city (although that wouldn’t be a bad start). No, he concluded; none of that would be enough.

He knew what he needed to do.

Who he needed to call.

In the quiet of his home, with his mother and daughter sleeping so near he would need to speak in a whisper, he picked up his phone and dialed. The answer came after the first ring.

“Admiral Anand Patel speaking. . . .”

Chowdhury froze. A beat of silence followed.

“Hello? Hello?”

“Hello, Uncle. It’s me, Sandeep.”



* * *





    13:36 June 27, 2034 (GMT+8)

300 nautical miles off the coast of Zhanjiang

White light on the horizon.

That’s how Sarah Hunt would always remember it.



* * *





11:15 June 30, 2034 (GMT+8)

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport

Lin Bao believed he had known them, but he hadn’t.

If he had once considered himself half American, he no longer thought so. Not after what they’d done at Zhanjiang three days ago. Every member of his crew knew someone who’d perished there, and almost all had family within the blast zone. Countless friends of his—from his academy days, to postings on other ships, to three cousins who had nothing to do with the Navy but who lived in that port city by the turquoise sea—each gone in an instant, in a flash. Others had not been so lucky. Lin Bao couldn’t bear to linger on the details; they were too gruesome. But he knew the hospitals in Beihai, Maoming, Yangjiang, and even as far away as Shenzhen had already filled to capacity.