“This isn’t a high population area,” said Madeline.
Troy shook his head. “No, but we’re close to D.C. and any political evacuation would be in this area. That’s who they’re searching for.”
“Me,” Madeline said.
“Probably.” Troy turned back to the soldier. “How many did you see? Has to be a lot.”
The soldier pursed his lips nervously before answering. “Like you said, Captain, this is a low population area. I would estimate thousands. I can’t imagine what it is elsewhere.”
“Oh, dear God,” Madeline gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her fingers trailed down across her lips and she glanced up to Troy. “What was that you were saying about having a fighting chance?”
The Kremlin, Russia
He sat.
In a slight lean, legs crossed, the president sat before his office window staring out. He had been that way for a while, just staring. Watching what he could as time passed quickly. His intelligence was all over the place.
When news reached him about first round of attacks on the United States, he was told it was homegrown domestic terrorists. A movement named Free America that would cause not only disruption but the takeover of the government. He himself had dealt with such rebels before. The almighty and righteous United States of America was finally experiencing what other countries had experienced. The United States preached, and possibly the rebels were always there, but never did they cause such an uproar.
The arrival of that news brought a sense of ‘I told you so’ and the president refrained from calling the leader of the United States.
Let them work it out.
Then the bombs fell.
They’re nuking their own soil? The thought bewildered the president, it was drastic.
Still… let them work it out. Allow the dust to settle and spearhead a humanitarian effort. He couldn’t imagine the chaos the United States would be under. After all, three cities were hit during 911 and it brought the US to a grinding halt. He could only imagine what ten nuclear warheads would do.
Then more intelligence poured in.
They came from submarines. Some were intercepted. Fingers were pointed at Russia and he denied responsibility.
Finally, the news of those responsible was startling. Without provocation The People’s Republic of China declared war on the United States. Their sneak attack came simultaneously and under the guise of the Rebel initiative. Even giving their campaign a similar name: Liberate America.
The Russian president needed to know what was going on. It was a matter of world safety.
The problem was, China went dark. They didn’t deny or boast. No news came from China, no chatter, even the internet was down. Deliberately, they had been taken back to the stone age.
The attack on the United States, the silence of China… not only was there chaos in the States, it was spreading like wildfire, like a disease with no cure.
At least three days after the bombs, the veil was lifted. Not only did China go back online, all of their news outlets were reporting the massive victory and how the people in the United States were cheering in the streets.
It didn’t make sense. None of it. They crippled the United States with diversions of nuclear weapons on mainly populated areas, then during the radio blackout, they invaded.
Now, news of unrest in his own country came to his desk and as he stared out the window, the Russian president, with a heavy heart, had some tough decisions to make.
He would take his time in choosing what course of action he would or would not take.
The cost was too steep if he made the wrong decision.
CHAPTER FIVE
Office of the Prime Minister, England
Prime Minister Adriene Winslet was once likened by the press to Margaret Thatcher. It was an American media station and she took it with a grain of salt. Americans always likened every British female politician to Thatcher, just like those in the UK likened every conservative American president to Ronald Reagan.
Winslet wasn’t as staunch or iron clad on things like Thatcher was. In fact, more times than not, she was pretty passive, and wished at this moment in time she could channel Margaret Thatcher because the situation needed it.
It boiled down to the good of an ally or the good of the country, because under the current situation, it posed more of a threat to help the United States than it did a benefit.
In fact, her own country was in turmoil, much as every other industrialized nation.
The stock markets crashed, and it had been a week since any imports arrived from overseas.
There was no word on that.
Shops, despite warning from the government, were price gouging as shelves increasingly grew empty. Half the population cried out for the government to do something—feed your people—while the other half sought violence.
Riots were an everyday occurrence and the military had been deployed to the streets with a strict, sun up to sun down ordinance.
It wasn’t working. The workforce for essential services was running about forty percent; people just didn’t go to work. Mass transportation had come to a halt, and within a week of the American bombings, nine terrorist attacks within London claimed a thousand lives.
Everything was falling apart.
She had citizens in the United States and hadn’t heard from any of them. Winslet was within her right to go and retrieve her people but she, like many other leaders, didn’t have a clue what was happening there.
The last the People’s Republic of China said was to defend their presence as humanitarian. They declined any further comment and balked at the threats made to them by Russia.
If indeed China had settled in America and claimed it, they controlled a good portion of the world’s food supply.
They’d have the upper hand. No amount of threats was going to make a dent, not when the world needed that food.
The only positive to it all was there had not been word of a surrender. Though that didn’t mean much. Winslet hadn’t heard from the president in days. That frightened her because the president wasn’t elected as leader, she was in a sense drafted because of her position in congress.
Before it all, Winslet never liked her, thought she had a big mouth, was always in the news for spouting off. But when things went down, Winslet believed that the president’s ‘big mouth’ would be an asset.
Suddenly the mouthy woman grew quiet and timid.
Who was Winslet kidding, every leader in the world had.
They just didn’t know what to do.
Perhaps collectively as leaders a solution could be devised. Winslet prepared for the emergency summit called by Russia.
Hopefully, heads together, something would be done.
Should they? Should anyone get involved?
Any confrontation could, and more than likely would, cause global catastrophe.
The bottom line was Winslet didn’t have to get involved in order for her country to be destroyed. She watched it unfold out of her Downing Street window. It was going to happen either way. It was just a matter of picking the path of least destruction.
Type 920 Hospital Ship, Pacific Ocean
There were six of them in that conference room all sitting around the table, all military leaders, and General Liu was one of them. They sat in silence, none of them speaking. The general knew what that was; there was a level of trust that was missing, and no one wanted to say anything for fear of repercussion. Hours from making landfall, they were brought together for the same purpose: to be informed of the mission and what would happen next.