“Once we’re sealed, Teddy, I assure you, there’ll be a full brief. Just can’t do it now.” Laughland stood, dusting sand off his knees. “All right, move inland. We’ve got an exercise area set up for a sandbox drill.”
“Bury the gear, sir? The rebreathers? In case we need it again?”
“Right now we’re thinking not. Destroy them. Render inoperable. The extraction will be by boat.”
“Yessir, just trying to think ahead. And… mines?”
Laughland halted in the dark. “Sea mines, Master Chief?”
“No sir. Land mines. Will the beach be swept before we land? Or do we need to build in the capability?”
Laughland looked away. “No need to worry, Master Chief. Just lock tight. Adapt and overcome. Hoo-ah?”
“Uh, yessir. Hoo-ah. But it’s my job to worry. About what can go wrong. Like at Makin. Or Tora Bora.”
“This isn’t going to be like Makin.”
“Hope not, sir. About the gear, again. If things happen to go to shit, we need to—”
“Just follow the plan, Master Chief.” The commander’s tone meant end of discussion. Teddy stared after him as he strode away up the beach.
Swager coalesced out of the dark. “What was that all about, Obie? He getting in your pants, or what?”
Teddy was spitting on the sand, trying to formulate some kind of smart-ass comeback, but none surfaced. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the feel of the mission, didn’t like whatever this black weight he towed was, didn’t like being kept in the dark. It wasn’t the SEAL way.
“Obie?” Swager muttered again.
“Ah, fuck it. Never mind.” Teddy tightened up his harness gear. “Pile the gear on the beach. Simulate a demo charge on it. Then round ’em up, move ’em out, get ’em headed inland.”
He turned the NVGs off. For a moment his dazzled gaze registered nothing.
Then, rising behind the palms… the stars. The banded radiance of the Milky Way, vibrating up there in the night like a billion glowing jellies tiding past.
His leg ached like a dying tooth. Makin had been a disaster, with heavy casualties. And was he going to be able to hack it, with a bad leg, his other injuries? He wasn’t forty. Yet. But in the world of the Teams, that was getting to be past it.
But there wasn’t much choice, it seemed like. The other Teams were in the spreading wildfire of the Mideast, back in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, or fighting the spreading Islamist nightmare in Africa.
But his worries seemed to recede as he blinked up at the distant lights wheeling in the sky. Not moving. Not even, really, thinking. Just being there.
Until at last he slung his carbine, and followed his men up the beach.
3
Traffic was light on 66. Probably not a good sign, despite the rain. It was still early enough to be darkish, a little after six on a Tuesday. The wipers whipped back and forth. The gauge was down to a quarter tank; the gas stations had been closed for days. She touched the pedal, and the engine purred as she nudged another few yards ahead. Two roadblocks and vehicle checks so far, and the red strobes of yet another glared off wet asphalt ahead, at the entrance to the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge.
Blair Titus tapped manicured nails on the wheel and sighed. It usually took half an hour to the Pentagon this time of the morning. An hour to the Capitol and, for much of the past two years, forty-five minutes to SAIC headquarters in McLean, Virginia. That was from the house in Arlington, a redbrick colonial with three bedrooms and a family room in the basement. Her husband, Dan, had lined it with shelves, to turn it into a library and home office.
Its back window looked out over a garden planted in terraces down a steep slope, ending in pine forest. She’d planned to get things in order out there, once she’d left the Pentagon, but somehow never found the time. Now overgrown beds of rhododendrons and azaleas shadowed the Christmas ferns and trilliums and dogtooth violets. They blocked the broad stone steps littered with fallen twigs and rotting leaves.
On NPR, the commentator was retailing the financial news in funereal tones. The Dow had begun faltering weeks before, as the Indo-Pak war began. Then a system crash had taken down Wall Street, closing trading. The panic had spread. The president had closed the banks, a step not taken since 1933, and called an emergency meeting of the Federal Reserve. Parallel cyberattacks had shut down much of the power grid, Internet, credit card accounts, cell phones, and the central servers that processed transactions for gas stations, sending prices over fourteen dollars a gallon — payable only in cash. A fire had shut down a smokeless propellant plant in St. Marks, Florida, one that supplied over 90 percent of the Army’s needs.
Yesterday the markets had reopened. But to the worst one-day loss in history. A Treasury bailout had summoned a brief rally, but when the House blocked further action, the bloodbath resumed. Even money market funds had lost over two hundred billion dollars as investors converted everything they could to cash.
On the radio, a Cambridge economist was discussing the average of the lowest quarter-end price-to-earnings ratio during panics and recessions from 1873 on. “The Dow closed yesterday at 6299, the S&P below 500 for the first time since the previous century. The question is, what knock-on effects insurance losses and the disruption of normal trade with Asia will have in the event of a prolonged conflict in the Pacific. That explains the massive drops in valuation of the major insurers, along with electronics, computer manufacturers, and large retailers. The sole sector with positive movement is defense manufacturing.”
She could imagine how her foster dad must feel. He’d always believed in being 100 percent invested, betting on growth. Her own portfolio was more conservative, but still, she’d lost over half her net value. The market ran on confidence, and the American people seemed to have lost that altogether: in Congress, in their president, in their economy, even in themselves.
So far, the primary instinct seemed to be self-preservation.
Diane Rehm was reporting that combined Vietnamese and U.S. forces were threatening the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea. Did that bring peace closer? Or push it out of reach? No one seemed to know. Just as she didn’t know where Dan was. The last she’d heard, before the Internet collapsed, his ship was in the South China Sea. Beyond that, nothing for days. Zip on the news, silence from the Navy… but of course, rumors swirled.
On impulse, she pulled her cell from the center console. But the screen still read no service. Just like everyone else’s.
The rain torrented down even harder as she reached the checkpoint at last. Sandbags. Orange plastic cones gleamed wet. An African-American guardsman waved her to a stop in front of a collapsible barrier, then did a double take and saluted. The Pentagon decal, still on her windshield. From the last administration, but it still showed three stars, her equivalent rank as undersecretary of defense. Rain brushed her cheek with cold fingers as she presented her identification. He handed it back, peered into the car. Her wipers slashed rain at him; he flinched; water dripped off the barrel of his rifle.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll turn those off—”
“Pop the trunk, please, ma’am. Where we headed this fine morning?”
“The Capitol. Armed Services Committee. I’ve been asked in to advise.”
He nodded again, gaze lingering on the side of her head as, in the rearview, another trooper inspected her trunk. She brushed a blond lock back to cover her ear. The graft had taken, but imperfectly. The surgeons had warned her, ears were difficult.