Washington, DC
The co-conspirators stood on their balcony at The Hay-Adams. The White House was less than four hundred metres away. The balcony afforded them a grandstand view. Within minutes Maksim Oleniuk and Chen Yan, the founders of Blackline PMC, were going to launch the largest attack on the United States of America since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, perhaps the biggest attack ever on the country. Maksim Oleniuk certainly hoped so. He looked down and smiled at the Chinese oligarch who had funded his dream of striking the US. It had been her finances – billions amassed from minerals and electronics, in partnership with his access and expertise as a former Russian Military Intelligence Officer, which had created this paradigm-shifting moment. Oleniuk found his partner highly attractive but understood she was the very last person in the world he should approach. He sipped his chilled champagne and wondered if she could read his mind.
‘What are you thinking of?’ Yan asked, surprising him, making his face colour in the gloom. Her American accent was flawless, perfected whilst she gained an MBA at the New York Institute of Technology. It put Oleniuk’s Russo-British accent to shame.
‘I am just thinking that never have parents given birth to such a powerful child.’
She inclined her head, a stoic expression on her face. ‘Our child will live and die in the same instant, yet leave an eternal legacy.’
‘Legacy,’ Oleniuk repeated. It was something he had strived to create and the perfect word for the occasion.
They stood like expectant parents, the former GRU officer rocking from foot to foot and the Chinese billionaire stock-still, but both were nervous, excited and scared of what was to come.
The timing of the detonation had been mandated to utilise empty airspace, or airspace as empty as it ever could be over the continental United States. The location was hugely symbolic; the US seat of power deliberately selected, politically central rather than geographically so. Oleniuk’s scientists had stated the risk of damage to the retina was small yet did exist if they were to stare directly at the epicentre of the detonation with the naked eye. For this reason, Oleniuk and Yan wore wrap-around sunglasses with specifically engineered lenses shielding their eyes. They gazed out over the balcony at the empty air a mile above the floodlit White House.
At exactly five a.m. there was a flash so quick that if the pair had not known exactly where to look it would have been missed, then a silent, purple detonation flowered. It bloomed like a monstrous, inverted Fourth of July firework. Its petals spread earthwards and then faded to be replaced by a mauve glow, creating a spectral false dawn.
Oleniuk felt the tingling sensation he had been warned to expect wash over him, as each individual hair on his body stood up on end. At that very moment, as if choreographed, every single light around the pair vanished. The White House lights disappeared, the floodlights on the lawn were no more and the stately residence of the President of the United States of America was plunged into darkness.
The glow started to fade; the night sky now taking on the appearance of the bruised eye of a heavyweight boxer, before it gradually became black once more. The co-conspirators removed their protective eyewear. They had delivered a form of vengeance like no other the modern world had ever seen and, ignoring ancient, fanciful tales of vengeful gods, the single most powerful.
Oleniuk put his arm around Yan. ‘We have done it.’
She did not reply; however, she did give him a sideways glance. Oleniuk quickly moved his arm. ‘I am sorry. I was overcome with emotion in the moment. I do apologise.’
‘It is understandable, given the circumstances.’
They continued to gaze at the capital city of the United States – dark, silent but not dead. The majority of the population were safely asleep and those who weren’t would interpret the loss of power as a citywide outage, a total blackout.