“And out there?” John finally asked, shifting the topic away from the personal for the moment.
“Where?”
“The world. Everything, anything. We no longer trust Voice of America out of Bluemont. We try to glean what we can from the BBC, even China and their News to America program. What’s the straight dope?”
Bob sighed, set his coffee mug down, unscrewed the cap to the flask of scotch, and offered it to John, who took another ounce while Bob emptied the rest back into his cup.
It surprised him. Bob always had a taste for good twelve- and fifteen-year-old scotch, but only after hours and off duty.
“John, the world has gone three-quarters of the way to hell and is tottering on the edge of the final abyss.”
John sipped his coffee and waited.
“From the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Oil is no longer the export. Maybe when things finally cool down enough, they can sell glass where once had been a score of cities.”
“Who?”
“Israel against the rest. Their ballistic missile shield held protecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but the rest. Their government is now underground in bunkers somewhere out in the Negev desert. It was a full exchange. Then Indian and Pakistan cut loose on each other. Not much left on either side.”
“Russia, China, Europe?” John asked.
“Holding off. Mutually assured destruction at play there. Russia was brushed by the EMP hit that went off course. Saint Petersburg abandoned. Moscow, word is some semblance of order there, the government holed up somewhere out in Siberia with their fingers on the trigger. John, the moment America was taken out of the paradigm of the balance of power, a vacuum was created. While survivors here were trying to just find the next meal, the rest of the world tottered to the edge and at least for the moment have held back from the final descent into the apocalypse.”
“It was the apocalypse here.” John reached over to the thermos to pour out some more coffee for the two of them.
The sun was climbing, radiating at least some warmth into the hangar, the icicles hanging along the eaves dripping puddles of water near their feet.
“John, we hang by the slenderest of threads. We still have a lot of nukes; the navy’s boomers are still out there, each one packing a couple of hundred warheads. The surviving carriers and their escorts pack more.”
“Surviving?”
“Guess we wouldn’t admit it. When all hell broke loose in the Persian Gulf the week after the EMP strike and we launched on Iran in retaliation, they took out two of our carriers with nearly all hands. In the wake of that, with the emergency back home, the assets we had over there, we pulled out.”
He nodded to the Black Hawk fifty yards away, rotors stilled but turbines still humming if things here went sour and Bob decided to pull out quick.
“John, most of what we have here now in the States we pulled out from the Middle East and Europe. After North Korea was taken off the map, equipment from the Pacific was pulled back stateside as well. We try to keep China in check by letting them know if they try anything with nukes, a boomer parked out in the Pacific will hit them with over two hundred nukes—starting with an EMP, of course. Sword of Damocles over their heads if they push us too hard.”
“But Bluemont is ceding half our country to them, Bob. I don’t get it.”
“Let’s just focus on the here and now,” Bob replied, obviously diverting the direction the conversation was taking.
That triggered another suspicion for John, but he knew better than to press the issue—and besides, Bob was right. It was the here and now that he had to focus on.
“Blunt question, Bob, for the ‘here and now.’”
“Go for it.”
“You got other assets nearby just in case this meeting went bad?”
Bob nodded. “Couple of Apaches and an extraction team set down on the far side of Linville Gorge. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“Hell of a position for two old friends, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“So why are you here?”
“To talk as we are right now.”
“Why?”
“John, you most likely know the political and military situation for our country. BBC has been rather close to the mark, and I assume you’ve been monitoring that.”
“We have.”
“I eventually was assigned out west, commander center in Cheyenne Mountain for a stint. We all knew it was a no-win with China. Sure, humanitarian aid was the guise; they wanted it to look like another Marshall Plan, with ‘hearts and minds’ thrown in. Can’t blame the folks out in California and on the rest of the West Coast. Infrastructure down, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, even Vancouver turning into snake pits of chaos. Someone trying to keep their family alive, feel that our government has utterly failed to protect, and container ships flying red flags start coming in. Rations, water purification plants, medical supplies.”
He paused. “Things like insulin, John. What would you have done?”
That barb, if it was intended as such, stung deeply, and he did not reply.
“Their first troops even wore UN-blue helmets. Three-quarters of the population out there already dead? People forget LA was built on what was near desert. Without the Colorado River being pumped in from hundreds of miles away, along with a dozen other reservoirs off-line, people were killing each other for a lousy bottle of water after just three to four days. Someone hands your kids water and a meal—”
“So they are there to stay, is that it?”
“Unless we want to go to nuclear war, yes.”
“These reports that we are abandoning the line along the Continental Divide, military assets pulled back to east of the Mississippi?”
“It’s being defined as neutral air space to defuse any chance of a confrontation. That and Mexico, with backing from half a dozen Central American countries pressing up over the Rio Grande. What do we do?”
“It was once our country, Bob.”
“Argue that with Mexico, who now claims we ripped them off in a long-ago and forgotten war.”
“And they ripped it off from those who were there before them.”
“History, John. It has always been thus. Take the veneer of civilization off, a major power receives a visceral blow and totters. Nature abhors a vacuum. Amazing—the years of political correctness pumped out in our colleges became an education of national guilt. Some out there along the West Coast actually say we deserved what we got for our past sins and welcomed a chance to try out socialism. Just feed us, and we’ll get along with whoever is in charge.”
“Anyone fighting back?”
“Yeah, Texas, of course. Voice of America isn’t reporting it, but some group in Texas declares they’re the new government, cite what they claim was the original treaty of annexation from the 1840s, and they are justified in withdrawing from the Union. They got representatives with them from half a dozen other states saying the same. It is ripe for a blowup. Logical, therefore, that our regular military pull out completely to avoid the prospect of this going really bad and what is left of our country getting sucked into the conflict.”
“Meaning nuke?”
“The Chinese are just as afraid of that as we are. They know if we popped three or four EMPs over their mainland, they would be in the same boat we are. But if we do that, they blanket what’s left of our country with ground bursts. We do the same back. Who wins other than death?”
“Thus we concede west of the Mississippi, and Bluemont focuses on bringing everything east back under their control. Are those the orders you’re following, sir?”