May 3
Various Locales, U.S.A.
11:56 P.M. EDT
Events settled uneasily back into a routine for much of America. The power was again on, cellphones worked, Internet users posted on Facebook or sent e-mails or surfed for pornography.
Much of the activity on all but the latter electronics-assisted technologies focused on the events of the past several days, of course. But past was past, and there were new fascinations and concerns and passing fads already luring thoughts away from those events.
It would soon be Sunday. A President would be buried with all due honors and ceremony; families and friends of people who had called Washington D.C. their home would mourn for some time longer. Various perils still threatened the world, and various means were still being devised to thwart those threats.
At Lackland AFB in Texas, Lester Weatherford had been given the order to stand-down, to take a well-deserved rest. He would be back at his console soon, but not until Monday. In a mid-sized Kansas town, a father and a son slept soundly in their beds; in the same town, a woman felt the first tingle of returning sensation in her legs, and thankfully reached down to scratch them.
Soon, it would be Sunday. In some places around the world, it already was.
• • •
Indian Ocean
8° 34’ 58” South, 81° 44’ 19” East
Sunday, May 4; 0358 Hours ZULU (GMT)
Saturday, May 3; 11:58 P.M. EDT
“I have received instructions from Moscow, Nicolai, via the extremely low-frequency radio transmission,” the captain informed his second. “We are to surface at our present location and maintain station at those coordinates.”
“Surface? Here? We are in the center of the Indian Ocean—literally in the middle of nowhere, Captain.”
“Perhaps they wish to order us to kill another submarine. Or to shoot and stuff a seagull of particular interest to a favored zoologist. I do not question Moscow’s orders.”
“It makes no sense,” his second argued. “Our location will be known to Western satellites. On their orbiting television cameras, they will see us clearly enough to count our hull weldings.”
“We have orders, Nicolai. We obey our orders. Prepare to surface, and make it so.”
The process was carried out with efficiency.
The Russian submarine streamed seawater, then settled into an uncomfortable wallowing under a cloudless sky.
They waited, officers and crew alike, under that clear sky. The far-off horizon was sharp, dividing the two shades of blue.
It came from over the horizon.
There was only the most faint of contrails, the missile virtually invisible in its speed and insignificance in the vast emptiness around the submarine.
But not insignificant to the radar systems aboard. They saw it, recognized the awful significance, screamed a warning via the computerized alert systems.
“Emergency dive, full power!” the Russian captain also screamed, just before the anti-sub Harpoon missile silenced him and the sub’s alarms forever.
• • •
“Does that satisfy your needs, Bibi?”
It was the voice of the President of the United States. He was talking via encrypted video-com with the Prime Minister of Israel, the latter surrounded by grim-faced senior officers of the Israeli Navy.
On monitors thousands of miles apart from the other, all involved had watched the satellite-transmitted video of the death of a Russian submarine bobbing in an ocean distant from both of their countries.
“It will suffice, Mr. President. An eye for an eye is sufficient, in this matter.”
“Consider it part of our thanks for your ongoing assistance to us, in our present need.”
“I consider it justice, Mr. President. But I thank you nonetheless.”
“We’ll talk soon, Bibi. There are a lot of things we still need to do—that I have to decide whether to do, I mean—and some of them may well involve a few of your neighbors over there. One in particular.”
“I understand. I do not envy your choices.”
“Me neither. But we’ll deal with them another day.”
The connection to New York broke off, and all eyes again turned to the larger screen in the room, where a gray cloud of smoke wafted softly in a now-empty sea.