General Carter was, to put it mildly, completely hammered when his phone rang. He, Zhang, and Kuzkin had been sitting in a dimly lit meeting room at the Pentagon since midnight, working their way through three bottles of vodka during a game of Tiger Has Come. They deserved the break. They’d spent days working around the clock implementing the reorganization to Operation Excision. Since General Zhang was already snoring in the corner and Carter could barely keep his eyes open, General Kuzkin was clearly going to win back all the money he’d lost from the round of golf and the game of dice, which at least had finally put him in a good mood.
Carter stared stupidly at the ringing mobile, far too drunk to consider picking it up. Eventually, Kuzkin reached across and answered. He grunted, put the device on speakerphone, and sat it in the middle of the table.
“Sir, there’s been a development,” a voice said.
“I’ll say,” Carter said. “I can’t feel my legs.”
After a beat of silence, the voice continued, “We bugged a phone call about an hour ago, from Tony Campbell to Piers Stokington.”
“Who are they?”
“The leader of BRIT and his liaison, sir.”
“Ah. And?”
“Tony Campbell said, and I quote, ‘No matter what you do, we won’t resist. We won’t fire off any nukes. We won’t do anything.’ He seems to be backing off from conflict, sir.”
Kuzkin raised two eyebrows—well, probably only one, but it was hard for Carter to tell considering the way the room was swimming. He raised his head from the table and slapped his cheeks hard. “Does it seem on the level?”
“Stokington seems to think so, sir. He got on the phone to his superiors. We thought it wise to block the call.”
“Good move. So they say they’re going to back down. That’s very accommodating of them. Sounds like a trap to me.”
“Indeed, sir. I should also inform you that Stokington is on the move. We think he might be driving over to tell his superiors in person. He seems quite agitated. From the things he’s mumbling to himself, it seems likely he’s going to try to persuade his superiors to have the attack called off.”
Carter motioned for another vodka and covered the mouthpiece. “The bastard’s trying to sabotage our golf plans.”
“Your golf plans,” Kuzkin said.
Carter knocked back his drink and turned the glass upside down. “Your turn,” he said, before speaking into the phone again. “Nobody listens to the Brits. Then again, we shouldn’t take the chance. We don’t need to bother our politician friends with this. Take him into custody. What time is it?”
“Oh three hundred hours EST, sir.”
“Right. Remind me when Operation Excision is due to start.”
“Eighteen hundred hours EST, sir. In fifteen hours.”
“I might not be able to stand up, but I can still count.” He paused. “What time will that be in Britain?”
“Twenty-three hundred hours BST, sir. They’re five hours ahead.”
“I knew that.”
“I also have to tell you that the satellites are still picking up growing population movements. We’re not going to get as many of them in the first round as we thought, sir.”
“Nothing we can do about that. Proceed as planned. We’ll mop up as we go along.”
He hung up and looked groggily at Kuzkin, who threw his glass of vodka down his throat. “Fine. You win. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’ll take your money back off you at Gleneagles.”
His head dropped to the table.
“Hole in one,” he muttered, and fell into the deep, dreamless sleep of the young, the innocent, and the very, very drunk.