CHAPTER 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boston, Massachusetts 16:12 EST

Senator Christine George stood behind her mahogany desk and stared out the office window. Her staff was gone, most having left at lunchtime in order to get a jump on the last weekend of summer. She had stayed to contact a few more donors and review some committee reports, but was now anxiously waiting for the power to come back on. Irritated by the delay and worried about what she might have lost on her computer, Senator George noticed that traffic forty floors below had come to a stop and people were getting out of their cars in the middle of Hanover Street. It was a puzzling sight -- motorists wandering through the knot of vehicles, not at all concerned about the traffic. As she reached for her cell phone, one of the telephones on the desk rang, the shrillness of its ring in her silent office causing her to jump. She reached for the receiver, then realized the ringing wasn’t coming from the office phone, but from the secure line that had been installed four years before when she had become head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. This black, ugly paperweight didn’t ring often, but when it did, it usually meant the CIA was calling to warn her about some crisis before the reporters started calling.

She stared at the phone, trying to decide whether to answer it now or put the headache off for a couple of hours. Curiosity won out, and she picked the receiver up on the fifth ring. “Senator George,” she said, using her most official tone. She recognized the voice on the other end of the line instantly. “Yes. Hello, General Fletcher. What’s so urgent?” She checked her reflection in the mirror on the wall and adjusted her hair while the general spoke.

“Senator, I’m required to inform you that we have an extremely serious situation. America has been attacked.” His tone was even more sober than usual, if that was possible.

The Senator’s hand fell from her hair, and she reached out for her desk as she dropped into the imposing leather chair that dominated the space behind her desk. “Was it one of our embassies? Please tell me that people haven’t been hurt.”

“No, Senator, I wish it was that simple. The country has been attacked. The entire country.”

“What are you talking about, the entire country? Was there another terrorist strike? I haven’t seen anything indicating any new threats in my reports…”

“Christine!” The general cut her off, uncharacteristically calling her by her first name. “Senator,” he corrected himself. ”Do you remember the briefing we gave Congress in January, the one we give every January after an election? One of the things we discussed was an electromagnetic pulse, an EMP. Do you remember?”

“That’s been awhile, but yes, I remember. Why?”

“Look out your window, Senator. What do you see?”

“Not much, just cars and people. We’re having a blackout right now, so traffic lights …” she paused as the dots connected inside her head. “Michael?!”

“That’s right, Senator. We’ve been hit, and hit hard.” The general spoke in rapid fire staccato, a trait completely foreign to him, but that only served to give added weight to his words. “Missiles were launched off both coasts at exactly 1600 hours. There are also unconfirmed reports that there might have been a third missile down in the Gulf, but we’ve yet to see firm evidence on that. Of the two that we know about, it appears that one malfunctioned and broke up before it detonated. The other was successful. It has only been a few minutes, but it appears that things will be as bad as we were told to expect. The assessment could change, but there isn’t going to be a positive way to spin this.”

Senator George struggled to maintain her grip on the telephone. “How bad is it going to be? Where was the military?” she asked incredulously. “How could this happen?”

“We had no warning on this,” General Fletcher barked into the phone. “It was a complete surprise. As things stand, there is nothing we could have done. Perhaps if there had been some warning, or if we had other weapons in our arsenal, we could have tried. As for how bad it’s going to be, we don’t know, and we’re not going to know the full extent of the damage for years. One is all it takes to bring everything down.”

“Why wasn’t there any warning? I’m the head of the Intelligence Committee and I’ve heard nothing. How could this happen?”

“Like I said, Senator, there was no warning. They kept this one quiet. It had to have been years in the making, but it wouldn’t have taken many people to pull it off, a couple dozen at most. It’s likely that none of the perpetrators ever set foot in our country, and there’s only so much we can know. NORAD picked the missiles up just after they were launched; that was the very first indication we had. Both missiles were launched from non-military boats off our coasts. We had no chance to react.”

“What about shooting them down? I thought we had systems to protect us. That’s what we spend all that money on the military for, isn’t it?” Senator George spat the words into the phone, her temper rising as the magnitude of the problem sank in.

“We’ve been working on some systems, Senator, but you know what’s happened to our money. Those things aren’t free. Thanks to our elected officials, everything that can be cut has been, and then some. If we’d had even a day’s notice, we could have attempted something, but on this one, there was no chance to get a shot off, let alone two.”

The senator sat in silence, contemplating General Fletcher’s words along with her role in diverting money the military had said it needed. The scenarios the military had talked about, had even threatened congress with, seemed so remote, so unlikely. How could they justify spending billions on weapons that, in all probability, would never be needed? Surely the voters wouldn’t hold her accountable for this. At least fifty-seven other senators had voted with her on each measure to reduce weapons money.

“Senator,” the general said, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ve got other calls to make. I need to go.”

“Michael,” she said, barely able to choke out the words. “How bad do you think it’s going to be?”

“It’s hard to say, Senator,” the general answered in the steady, cold monotone that she was used to, the anger from seconds ago already dissipated. “Everything before today has, for the most part, been theory. My guess is that casualties will be around fifty or so. I might be wrong, but some of our estimate range to eight times that.”

“Fifty thousand?” Senator George gasped. “You’re kidding, right?” It was more of a plea than a question. “You can’t be serious. It’s just electricity. People will adjust.”

“Senator, the United States, Canada and Mexico have all been affected, and that’s close to half a billion people. By the time this is over, I think we are looking at fifty million casualties. I hope it’s much less, but that will all depend on how people react. The first wave is today: accidents, loss of medical care, fires, airplanes and such. Next will be weeks of chaos and lawlessness while people adjust to the realities of having no power, no functioning government, and no civic control. It will be much worse in the cities, so if you have someplace to go to, out of town, I highly recommend that you leave quickly. In this stage we’ll also lose everyone dependent on doctors and medicine to stay alive. That will be followed by a relatively quiet period of starvation as people run out of food and no longer have the energy to cause trouble and contribute to the chaos. In the north, people will freeze once winter hits. In three or four months, maybe not until spring time, we’ll be faced with large-scale anarchy as those who do have food and weapons try to piece together some semblance of tribal order.

“I just hope there’s a country worth saving after all of that,” the general continued. “I truly hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. We’ve game-planned this one out quite a bit.” The general paused to let his words sink in then continued in his gravelly monotone. “Have a good day, Senator. You know how to get in touch with me if you need to, assuming this phone system that we’ve spent so much money on manages to hold up.”

The line went dead and Senator George let the phone drop from her hands. She knew General Fletcher didn’t care for her but had been obligated to call because she was the head of the Intelligence Committee. She didn’t particularly care for him either. He didn’t appreciate the difficult job politicians had of trying to keep constituents happy and making things work in Washington, all while working to get reelected. But despite her opinion of the general, she knew he was honest -- blunt, but honest, and not one to say things for effect. As she spun in her chair to stare out the window, Senator George tried to imagine how the chaos that General Fletcher threatened would descend on her beloved city. The images that came to mind sent shivers down her spine. Then she noticed a dark plume of smoke ascending skyward from an older neighborhood to the north.

 

George Bush International Airport, Houston, Texas 16:12 EST

Kyle returned to the row he had been sitting in and gripped the shoulders of the lady across the aisle who was still dabbing at her face. “Get off the airplane!” he yelled as he shook her and pointed to the exit. He then turned to Ed, still slumped over and unmoving. After confirming that Ed had a pulse, Kyle grabbed Ed under his arms and heaved him into the aisle. Dragging Ed behind him, Kyle backed down the aisle a half dozen steps when he bumped into someone and could go no further. He turned to see the flight attendant attempting to rouse the unconscious man who had been traveling with his daughter.

“Do you need help?” Kyle yelled.

The attendant shook her head. “I can get him. You get off now!” she directed, jerking her head towards the flames outside the window.

Kyle felt the heat from the fire on his face and nodded in agreement, then continued dragging Ed towards the rear exit, his lungs burning from the strain and the smoke. Kyle guessed that Ed weighed less than he did, but with Ed’s body as dead weight in the narrow aisle, he was having a difficult time making it to the exit.

After a short struggle he worried might be his last, Kyle finally reached the exit. He released Ed and thrust his head out of the smoke-filled cabin. The outside air was hot and thick with humidity, but free of the dense, suffocating smoke that filled the airplane. Inhaling deeply, Kyle didn’t think he’d ever prized a breath so much in his life. After a quick second breath, Kyle lifted Ed, gave a powerful tug, and they plunged out the door. The two men tumbled down the yellow emergency slide, coming to a stop at the bottom.

The roar and heat of the flames pushing him forward, Kyle rapidly scrambled to his feet and shook Ed, but he just moaned and mumbled incoherently. With all the strength he could muster, Kyle draped Ed across his shoulders and set off toward a crowd of survivors who had gathered a hundred yards from the wreckage. He struggled with his load and stumbled on the uneven ground, twice falling to his knees, then rising again, until finally making it to the cluster of passengers.

Three men from the crowd came forward and helped lower Ed to the ground, then Kyle collapsed in a heap, coughing and completely spent. His whole body felt limp as he lay on his side and struggled to catch his breath, but his eyes stayed locked on the airplane, which was now almost entirely engulfed in flames.

Through the smoke he could see the flight attendant and the unconscious man at the bottom of the emergency slide. The attendant leapt to her feet and pulled on the motionless body, dragging it only a few feet before stumbling and falling to the ground. Two men from the group started to run towards her just as a massive explosion rocked the area and knocked them, and others standing nearby, off of their feet. Kyle turned away from the explosion and shielded his face with an arm, the heat from the fireball burning the skin on the back of his neck. Debris hit the ground around him, and people, already deep in shock, screamed and ran further away. Too tired to run, Kyle crawled to Ed and knelt over him, using his body as a shield against the debris.

A scrap of smoking metal landed a few feet away and bounced past. Exhausted, Kyle reached up with his arms in an attempt to cover the back of his head. When the sounds of the falling debris stopped, Kyle turned back towards what, just minutes before, had been a modern jet aircraft, but was now just a heap of burning wreckage, with smoke billowing in black, oily clouds from its twisted skeleton.

Ed stirred and looked towards Kyle, but his eyes were empty and far away.

“Ed, you with us?” Kyle asked, his voice weak and dry.

Ed stared blankly, like he’d been roused suddenly from a deep sleep, but didn’t answer. When he tried to get up, Kyle grabbed his arm and held him down.

“Just relax,” Kyle said. “You were hit hard. There should be an ambulance here soon. They’ll want to check you out.”

Ed resisted briefly, then relented and sat back down while Kyle scanned the wreckage of the airplane for any sign of the flight attendant. She had been just a few feet from the bottom of the slide when the explosion happened, but that area was now a smoldering pile of rubble with no sign of any survivors. The body of the airplane had broken in half just behind the wings, causing the tail portion to fall backwards onto the ground. Jagged, twisted openings covered the plane’s body, as if someone had ripped away the skin of the airplane to peer inside, the exposed seats suspended precariously in the air. A few scorched pieces of fabric dangled limply below what remained of the rear emergency exit. Nearby, dozens of small fires burned in the grass surrounding the wreckage, the twisting ribbons of smoke the only movement Kyle could make out in the vicinity of the plane.

Kyle turned reluctantly away, wondering how many people had died, and what loved ones they had left behind. Instinctively, he reached for his cell phone to call home and let his wife know what had happened, but his phone wasn’t there. Then he remembered tossing it into his carry-on after making his last call home.

“Ed, you got a phone?”

Ed’s eyes were still vacant, but he seemed to be slowly coming around. “I do,” he said groggily, then gingerly pulled his phone from his pocket and handed it to Kyle. “Where do you think the fire trucks are?”

Kyle took the phone and flipped it open. “I don’t know. They should be here by now; we’re not that far from the terminal.” As Kyle dialed his number, he stood and strained to hear the sirens. “You don’t have service,” he said, handing the phone back to Ed. “I want to get a hold of my wife before she sees the news. This is going to freak her out pretty bad.”

Ed took his phone and looked at the screen. He pushed a couple of buttons and tried to make a call, then put it back on his belt. “How’d I get off the plane?”

“You were a little out of it, so I helped you.”

Ed rubbed his head, and Kyle dropped to the ground beside him. “I don’t hear any sirens, Ed. I don’t know what’s going on.” Kyle looked towards the airport but could see only the tops of the buildings from behind the berm of dirt. “They should be here. There are a lot of people hurt.”

Looking around, Kyle noticed several other people trying in vain to use their phones. “There must be some kind of jamming device. No one’s phones are working,” he observed.

“My phone worked earlier,” Ed said matter-of-factly. “How’d you get me off the plane?”
“I had to drag you. Figured your family might want to see you again.”
“Do you think everyone made it?”

Kyle shook his head. “I don’t.” He paused. “I think we were about the last ones. There were still a few people in there when we got off, but I don’t think they made it.”

Ed looked at Kyle, his eyes becoming more alert. “Thanks. I appreciate you helping a stranger. I hope I would have done the same.”

“Don’t be too grateful. I almost left you behind. I was pretty scared.” Kyle stood back up. “Wait here. I’m going to see if I can tell where the emergency vehicles are. It’s like they don’t know we’re here.”

Kyle walked as quickly as his worn-out legs would go back towards the berm that had launched the airplane. It was some distance away, and required him to climb to the top in order to see the buildings of the airport. Another man from the airplane was already on top of the berm, frozen, one hand shielding the sun from his eyes as he stared into the distance. Kyle crested the short hill and as he reached the top he felt the air suck from his lungs as the scene unfolded in front of him.

The other passenger turned when he heard Kyle gasp. “Is this real?” he asked, his voice cracking.

Kyle recognized the man from the boarding area. “I don’t know,” he replied, barely able to speak. His head swung slowly from side to side. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It doesn’t seem possible.”

 

Deer Creek, Montana 16:20 EST

Jennifer pressed the power button on the TV one more time, then gave up and went back to putting the groceries away. As she carefully squeezed the eggs onto the crowded bottom shelf of the fridge, it dawned on her that the fridge light was out. She looked at the stove and saw that the clock was blank as well.

“Hey, Spencer,” she called out, “I think I know what’s wrong with the TV.”

Spencer was sitting on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, hard at work on a large dinosaur puzzle. A pterodactyl’s eyes peered from the piece he was using to scratch his head. “Are you done with the groceries? Are you going to fix it now?” he asked excitedly.

“No, not yet,” she answered. “Mommy can’t fix it. I think the power’s out,” she said with an exaggerated frown. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, Mom,” Spencer replied. “What you need?”
“Go turn on the lights in the bedrooms and tell me if any of them work.”
“You bet,” he yelled over his shoulder as he lumbered to his feet and ran down the hall towards the bedrooms.

 

George Bush International Airport, Houston, Texas 16:30 EST

The two men from the stricken airplane stood on top of the berm, trying to make sense of the scene in front of them. Between where they stood and the far side of the airport they could see the burning wreckage of three other airplanes, all with thick, oily plumes of smoke billowing skyward and casting a gray pall over the area. In a neighborhood further to the east, no more than a mile from the end of the runway, Kyle could see a thick column of smoke there as well.

After a long silence Kyle finally spoke. “I don’t think they’re coming for us.” He knew it was a serious understatement, but could think of nothing else to say.

The man merely nodded, but his expression spoke volumes. After a few more minutes of observation they returned to where the survivors from their flight, along with a number of people who had come from nearby buildings to offer assistance, had re-gathered.

Kyle found one of the pilots on the edge of the group, giving aid to an injured passenger and pulled him to the side. The pilot was young, maybe 30 years old, and his face was smeared with dirt and sweat and smoke.

“What do you need?” the pilot demanded, glancing back at the older woman he’d been attending to.

There was a gold pin on the captain’s chest, the name K. Hansen was printed in black letters. Kyle swallowed and was about to speak when the man from the top of the berm took the initiative. “There’s something seriously wrong, sir,” he began.

When their conversation was over, the pilot strode back towards the group, cleared his throat and called out to the survivors. “Attention everyone! I need you to gather in here closer, please. Quickly!” He waited as people moved towards him. After about 30 seconds he addressed the group. “As you can see, there’s smoke on the other side of that bank of dirt.” He motioned towards the airport, and people turned in that direction. “I’d thought the smoke was from our crash, but I’ve just been informed that other planes have crashed as well.” A murmur went up from the group. “It appears likely,” he continued, “that emergency vehicles won’t be coming to our assistance, at least not for awhile. I recommend that we start to move towards the terminal where we can find some help. Those who are able, please help those who are not.”

“What’s going on?” someone shouted.

“I have no idea,” the pilot answered, his voice shaking. “I just know what I’ve been told. But I know help should have been here a long time ago.”

 

NORAD headquarters, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado 16:32 EST

As the ranking commander at the time of the attack, Alan had the unenviable responsibility of communicating what little was known to those who ranked high enough to be informed.

General Glenn Young, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was on the line. “We don’t know,” Alan responded into the phone. “There were no military vessels in the areas the missiles launched from. We have two, small, navy vessels within one hundred miles of the launch on the East Coast, but that’s as close as we get.”

“Do we have any idea how effective the missiles were?” General Young asked.

“Preliminary indications are that this is a worse-case scenario,” answered Alan. “Obviously information is limited due to communication failures, but that in and of itself is an answer. All communication on the civilian networks is down. Our power supply has switched to self-generation. Satellite communication is no longer effective. NORAD has contact only through our military fiber optic networks. General, it’s bad. We just don’t know how bad yet.”

“The power’s out at my house in Virginia,” the general mused. “We were getting ready to head to the lake when everything went dead. I thought it was local until this phone started ringing.” General Young paused, his mind filtering rapidly through what he knew about a nuclear EMP. “If it’s as bad as the professors told us it would be, may God have mercy on us. I’ll contact the president once I figure out where he landed.” The general paused a second, then added quietly, “Alan, this may sound out of place, but I hope you find some time to pray. That may be our best hope for awhile.”

The solemnity in General Young’s voice reverberated in Alan’s ears. The general was typically a jovial individual, always upbeat and encouraging and one of the truly decent ones that Alan worked with, but today there was none of that. He sounded like a man who’d been told he only had weeks to live. “I will, sir,” promised Alan. “I’m sure I won’t be the only one.”

 

George Bush International Airport, Houston, TX 17:10 EST

A handful of survivors from Flight 17 moved slowly through the concourse, tired, bloodied, and shocked by the scene surrounding them. Kyle and Ed had helped an overweight, college student with a swollen ankle and knee abrasions into the terminal, along with a retired school teacher from Oklahoma who was physically fine, but suffering from shock.

After getting their two charges settled and finding a security officer to take responsibility for them, Ed and Kyle found two empty seats and dropped into them, exhausted and frightened.

Everywhere they looked it was chaos. People were pressed against the windows, watching the burning airplanes on the runways. Around the boarding counters frightened, unruly crowds gathered, demanding information, but receiving none. The occasional police officer or airport security personnel ran through the terminal, looking worried and official, but with no apparent plan of action. Parents stood guard over their children, protecting them from something unknown.

Kyle noticed that the monitors that usually displayed flight information were blank, and that the terminal was lit with sunlight and emergency lighting. “This looks like a war zone, Ed. What on earth is going on?”

“I don’t know, Kyle, but I need to sit down. Between my feet and my head, I’m about ready to fall over.”
Kyle nodded. “Wait here for me. I’m going to see if I can find someone who knows what’s going on.”
****
Ed’s eyes snapped open at the sound of Kyle calling his name. “I thought you might have abandoned me. What’d you find out?”

“I learned where there’s an emergency first aid office I can take you to, but that’s about it. I wish I knew more. Let me help you get down there.” Kyle assisted Ed to his feet and as they worked their way through the airport he described his 30-minute ordeal to find answers.

“So you’re saying they’re clueless?” Ed asked when Kyle finished.

Kyle nodded. “Total confusion. Practically on the verge of a riot. Security has no idea what’s going on, and everyone wants answers, which no one has. When I forced my way into the security office, some guy threw a punch at me before his wife pulled him away. I did get directions to where to take you to get looked at though. They were shocked to hear there was a crash that had survivors. The other planes that crashed were all airborne or landing apparently, but no one really knows for sure.”

At the end of a short hallway past the car rental counters, Ed and Kyle found the medical room bursting with people in a worse state of panic than they had seen at the gate area. Kyle recognized a handful of passengers from their airplane, but the most seriously injured hadn’t made it there yet, and most of those in the room seemed to suffer more from the stress of witnessing the crashes than from any actual physical injury.

“Do you want to find a chair?”

Ed surveyed the room from the doorway and watched the four overwhelmed medical personnel working frantically to help the crush of patients. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “I feel half dead, but if I stay here, I think I might get all the way there. Let’s go find a seat somewhere else where we can rest a minute and figure something out.”

The found seats in the luggage claim area and Ed dabbed sweat off his face with his shirtsleeve, leaving a dark patch on his forearm to go along with the growing circles of sweat under his armpits. “Is this real or some kind of a nightmare?” he asked as another police officer ran by.

Kyle shook his head. “It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It’s unexplainable. I don’t know if the airport was hit by some cosmic force, or a terrorist strike, or who-knows-what. If someone told me UFOs caused this, I’d be hard pressed to argue.”

They sat in silence, lost in their thoughts and watching the pandemonium. Ed spoke after a long period of silence. “I don’t think we’ll be flying out of here today, even if we want to. I don’t think anyone is. This is completely different from anything I’ve ever seen or heard of. With all those crashed airplanes, there should be hundreds of emergency vehicles from all over the city out there, but I didn’t see a single one. There should have been enough help for us, even with the other planes down. I bet we’d still be waiting out by that airplane if we hadn’t come in on our own. Something is wrong at a level I can’t fathom.”

Kyle nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. I think everyone is. You can see it in their faces; there’s a fear and helplessness that I’ve never seen. Of course, how are you supposed to act when you’ve seen an airplane fall from the sky?”

“It’s not just one plane wreck, Kyle. It’s multiple wrecks. It’s no emergency assistance to our flight, and no response for those other planes. It’s no power in the terminal. It’s total confusion with the airport employees. You saw them. They had no idea what they should be doing. Some of the smart ones are faking it, but most of them look like they want to cry. And the passengers…they’re freaked out bad. There’s a deeper fear there than just the power being out, more than a plane crash. Have you noticed that no one is using their cell phone? We tried mine, but it’s dead. They’re all dead. In a situation like this, everyone would be on their phone. It’s like…I know this doesn’t make any sense, but it’s like we’ve been attacked.” Ed paused a moment before continuing. “You remember 9/11?”

Kyle nodded. “Who doesn’t? I’ll always remember it. I was listening on my car radio 2,000 miles away from New York when it happened, but I’ll always remember it.”

“It feels like that, but ten times worse. Remember how unreal everything felt that day? How you couldn’t believe it was happening, even as you watched it on TV? This feels the same way. I don’t know why, but it does.”

Seated across from them, a young mother tried to console a crying baby while her husband tried to cheerfully read a book to a child of two or three. Kyle’s eyes wandered the area as he digested what Ed had said about 9/11. Then he remembered some training he’d gone through years before. A cold chill ran down his back, and he physically shuddered. “I think I might know what’s happened,” he said, swallowing hard and staring down at the tile floor. “But I hope like hell I’m wrong.”