Triggers

Chapter 45

Bessie opened the door to the cottage, letting in a blast of cool morning air. The blond, brown-eyed Army officer stationed outside spun on his heel, and said, “Can I help you with something, ma’am?”

“Are you normally here, young man?”

“Someone will be on guard all day, ma’am.”

“No, I mean, are you normally part of the Camp David staff?”

“No, ma’am. I’ve been temporarily assigned here; I’m usually stationed at the Pentagon.”

“Ah,” said Bessie. They weren’t going to let her talk to anyone who wasn’t already in the know, it seemed. “I need you to deliver this to the president,” she said, handing him a sealed envelope; she’d found some nice linen ones in the same drawer as the Camp David stationery.

“I can’t leave my post, ma’am, but I’ll call for someone else to come and get it.” He took the envelope from her.

“It’ll go straight to the president himself?”

“Well, ma’am, I’m sure there’s a process. It’ll be turned over to his staff.”

Bessie shook her head. “That’s not good enough, young man. I want you to take it to him—you personally. Call for someone else to stand here, but you deliver it yourself, do you understand?”

“I—that’s not how it’s normally done, ma’am.”

Bessie rallied all her strength. “These aren’t normal times, are they? Surely you understand that the president brought me here for a reason. You wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for him not getting an important message from me in time, now, would you?”

He seemed to consider this, then: “No, ma’am.”

“So you’ll personally see that he gets it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll take it directly to the residence.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Bessie smiled. “Thank you.” She closed the door and turned around just in time to see Darryl Hudkins emerging from his room. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, although Bessie’s luggage had been waiting for her when she’d arrived here; someone had fetched her things from the Watergate.

“Good morning, Mrs. Stilwell,” he said. “Sorry I slept in so long.”

“Nothing else to do,” Bessie said.

“True. Did you sleep all right?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Have you called for breakfast yet?” They’d been told whatever they needed would be brought to them.

“No,” Bessie said. “I’m usually not hungry when I get up.” She thought for a moment, made a decision, then pointed to the living area. “Won’t you sit down? There’s something I need to tell you.”

She imagined his eyebrows went up, but, from this distance, she really couldn’t see. He went to the sink, got himself a glass of water, asked her if she wanted one, then went and took a seat on the ornately upholstered couch facing a giant window.

“We have to talk, Darryl. Or, well, maybe we don’t. I’m still getting used to how this all works, but…”

“Yes, ma’am?”

She paused, again having second thoughts. After all, Darryl was one of Jerrison’s trusted associates; the president had chosen him to go with her to California. She searched Jerrison’s memories for any indication that he’d taken Darryl into his confidence about Counterpunch.

Nothing.

Of course, Darryl might still be in on it; Bessie doubted the president briefed members of his protective detail personally. And so, she decided, she’d find out the old-fashioned way: she’d ask. “Darryl, does the name Counterpunch mean anything special to you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“It didn’t to me either, until yesterday, but…God, I don’t even know where to begin. Can you—can you pluck it from my mind?”

There was a pause, then: “I’m not finding anything, ma’am.”

“Counterpunch? Are you sure? I know all about it.”

“Nothing is coming to me. Where did you hear about it?”

“Well, I didn’t, actually. It’s something I learned about from the president’s memories.”

“Oh,” said Darryl. “Well, if I understand what Dr. Singh said, ma’am, the linking of minds is what he called ‘first-order.’ You can read the president’s memories, and I can read your memories, but I can’t read through you to his memories.”

“Oh, I see,” said Bessie. “Then I guess I just have to tell you.”

“That’d be simplest, ma’am.”

She took a deep breath. “Operation Counterpunch is what they’re planning to do,” she said.

“Who?”

“The president. The military.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And, ma’am, what is it they’re planning?”

“To destroy Pakistan.”

“I—what?”

“To destroy Pakistan,” she said again, and this time she did clearly see Darryl’s eyebrows go up. “To wipe all hundred and seventy million people there off the face of the Earth.”

“God,” he said, although it was more breath than voice. “Why?”

“I—I don’t know how to put this.”

“Was it Jerrison’s idea?”

“No. No, it was presented to him two months ago, by um…” She had trouble with the name; she’d recalled it repeatedly now, but wasn’t quite sure how to make the initial sounds for it. “Um, Mr. Muilenburg. He’s the, um—”

“The secretary of defense,” said Darryl. “Go on.”

“That’s right. He came to see the president, and laid it all out for him. Their conversation went something like this…”

Silver-haired Peter Muilenburg sat on one of the short couches in the Oval Office, and Seth Jerrison sat on the other one, facing him, the presidential seal on the carpet between them.

“And so,” Muilenburg said, “our recommendation is simply this: we wipe Pakistan off the map.”

Seth’s mouth dropped open a bit. “You can’t do that.”

“Of course we can, sir,” replied Muilenburg. “The question is whether we should.”

“No,” said Seth. “I mean, you can’t. Nuclear weapons are dirty; if you take out Pakistan, you’re bound to send fallout into the surrounding countries. Iran and Afghanistan to the west, China to the north, India to the east.”

Muilenburg nodded. “That would be true if we were proposing using nukes. But the new Magma-class bombs don’t give off any appreciable radiation, and the electromagnetic pulse they produce is much less devastating than that generated by a nuke.”

“It sounds like those terrorist bombs,” Seth said.

“Where do you think they got the technology?” Muilenburg replied evenly. He held up a hand. “Not that we gave it to them, of course. The initial research was another one of those cold-fusion notions, coupled with some interesting new physics out of Brookhaven. No one quite realized the destructive potential at first; when we did, it was classified beyond top secret, but enough hints and clues had already gotten out.”

“So the Chinese have this, too? And the Russians?”

“Not big bombs, like we’ve got, sir—at least, as far as we know. Which is why we have to do it now—an immediate counterpunch.”

Seth shook his head. “It’s not a proportionate response, Peter.”

“Was nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki a proportionate response to Pearl Harbor?” asked Muilenburg. “Two whole cities, full of civilians, for one Navy base? At Pearl Harbor, twenty-four hundred people died, of whom just fifty-seven were civilians; the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed a hundred times as many—almost a quarter of a million people, almost all of them civilians. Was that proportionate? No—but it ended the war. It stopped it cold. When we had the clear upper hand in 1945 against the Japanese, we used it—and we never had to fear the Japanese again.”

“But the terrorists aren’t just in Pakistan,” Seth said.

“True. But most of the al-Sajada leaders are there. And Pakistan shielded bin Laden for years; their ISI knew he was there. Yes, there are terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, but the message will be clear: if there’s another attack on American soil, we’ll take out another nation that harbors terrorists.”

“No,” said Seth. “I mean the terrorists are here. In the United States, and London, and elsewhere. They’re already here; that’s how these attacks can happen.”

“Foot soldiers. The leaders are back there.”

“In the Islamic world?” Seth said. “This isn’t a war against Islam.”

“No, it’s not,” Muilenburg said. “There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and fifty countries in which Muslims are the majority of the population. Pakistan is just a tiny part of Islam.”

“This is horrific,” Seth said. “Abominable.”

“What’s been done to us is horrific,” replied Muilenburg. “And it will go on and on unless we force them to stop, unless we show them that we will not tolerate it. We’re the last remaining superpower. It’s time we used our superpowers and put an end to this.”

Darryl listened intently as Bessie recounted the meeting between Secretary of Defense Muilenburg and the president. “And Jerrison bought into this?” he said when she was done.

Bessie nodded. “And it’s going ahead on Monday. Tomorrow.”

Darryl looked around the luxurious cottage—but a gilded cage is still a cage. “I guess there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?”

“Well,” said Bessie, “there’s not much.” She searched the president’s memories to see if he had received her letter yet; it didn’t seem so. “But,” she added, looking out the window at the snow-covered forested ground, “at least I’ve given it my best shot.”