The screen cut from a quick establishing shot of the White House, to archival footage of a nuclear explosion — complete with trademark mushroom cloud, to an overhead helicopter shot of a major traffic pileup on an unidentified freeway, to what looked like rioting and general pandemonium in the streets, and back to the nuclear mushroom cloud.
Something had happened. Something huge. But what was it?
The voiceovers and the on-screen text were all in Japanese, which Ann could not read or speak a word of. She glanced around at the groups of Asian travelers clustered around every visible television. Most of them stood in what appeared to be stunned silence, while a few spoke to their fellows in intense whispers.
The news feed cut back to the Ryuichi Sakamoto lookalike for a few seconds. Then it switched to a still shot of the U.S. Pentagon, jumped to footage of ambulances and paramedics helping injured people, dissolved to a still shot of a city skyline that might have been San Diego, and then returned to the nuclear explosion.
Ann looked over at Sheldon, whose attention was focused entirely on trying to get his cell phone to work.
Ann sighed. “Will you let that damned thing alone? You’re about three thousand miles outside of your cellular provider’s coverage area. You’re not going to get a signal in freaking Japan. Okay?”
Sheldon shook his head. “I upgraded my service plan to include Japan and South Korea. I’ve got a signal. That’s not the problem.” He punched several buttons and put the phone to his ear. “I need to check on my Mom and my dogs, okay?”
Ann looked back to the television screen. The Japanese news station was running a feed from CNN now. A blonde anchorwoman stood in the foreground, speaking into one of those stupidly oversized network microphones. In the distant background, the Pentagon was visible. Ann listened carefully to catch the anchorwoman’s words, but the local station was running the Japanese translation in place of the original English voice track.
A graphic window appeared beside the American news correspondent. A computer animatic of a fiery mushroom cloud blossomed above the CNN logo. The words, “NUCLEAR ATTACK” appeared over the animated image in a red diagonal banner.
Sheldon closed his cell phone with an audible thump. “Damn it. I can’t get through. The phone lines on the West Coast must be overloaded with traffic. Whatever the emergency is, it must be …”
He glanced up at the television screen in time to catch the end of the NUCLEAR ATTACK animation. “Nuclear attack? Where? I mean, who got hit?”
Ann shot him a look. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to find out. Now … Will you please freaking ask somebody?”
Sheldon shoved the cell phone into his travel bag. “You’ve got a mouth. Why haven’t you asked somebody?”
Ann rewarded him with another dirty look. “I don’t speak Japanese.”
Sheldon raised an eyebrow. “What am I? Secret Ninja Boy? I don’t speak Japanese either.”
He looked around. “Besides, at least two-thirds of these people speak English. I guarantee it.”
Ann stared at him without speaking. He knew why she hadn’t asked. She couldn’t deal with members of her own culture. Fifty percent of Sheldon’s job was talking to people so that she didn’t have to.
Sheldon groaned theatrically. “Okay. I’ll go ask somebody.”
He climbed out of his seat and stumped across the room to the closest cluster of locals.
Ann watched him as he struck up a conversation with a thirtyish Japanese couple. They were total strangers, but Sheldon smiled at them almost immediately. His hands flitted about like birds as he talked. His face was alive with interest.
How did he do that? She knew the smile and the interest were genuine. He could walk up to complete strangers in a foreign airport and make an immediate connection. How in the hell did he do that?
Sheldon turned toward Ann. He pointed in her direction, then to himself, and finally to the news story on the television screen. He spoke. The couple responded, and Sheldon spoke some more.
The Japanese man glanced back at Ann, nodded a couple of times, and began using the finger of one hand to trace and retrace something against the palm of his other hand. A curve? It looked like he was drawing and redrawing a curve with his fingertip. Then, he used the fingertip to point to a spot in mid-air, about six inches to the left of his open palm. He poked that spot several times with his fingertip, as though punctuating a sentence with multiple periods.
Sheldon nodded, bowed slightly to the man and to his wife, and walked back toward Ann.
As she watched him approach, Ann was struck by the notion that Sheldon came from an entirely different planet. Or maybe she did. Sheldon seemed to fit, after all. He could talk to the corporate suits, the computer geeks, the gung-ho military types, and total strangers — all with apparently equal facility. He could find a way to fit in just about anywhere, even in countries where he didn’t speak the language. Ann, on the other hand, only seemed to relate to machines. Maybe she was from another planet. If so, she was ready to go home to Planet Z-X-55, or wherever she came from.
Sheldon dropped heavily into the seat next to her. “It was a nuclear attack,” he said.
Ann sat up. “What? Where …”
Sheldon held up a hand. “Slow down. It’s okay. Some whack-job revolutionary in Siberia launched a bunch of nuclear warheads at the West Coast. Our military shot them down. All but one, anyway. That one hit about a hundred miles west of San Diego. Blew up a big piece of water. Probably killed a few million fish.”
“Wait a minute,” Ann said. “You’re telling me they missed? Somebody tried to nuke the West Coast, and they freaking missed?”
“Looks like it,” Sheldon said. “The one that got through missed, anyway.” He tugged at his lower lip. “Or maybe our guys knocked it off course. They hit all the rest of the warheads. Maybe they hit that one too, but it wasn’t destroyed. Just knocked off course, so it landed in the ocean instead of San Diego.”
He grinned at Ann. “Pretty good shooting, huh? The media’s constantly telling us that Ballistic Missile Defense is a waste of our tax dollars. But it looks like it did the job.”
Ann looked up at the television screen. The Japanese news program was showing the ambulances again. Injured and bloodied people being tended to by paramedics. Blue and red police lights flashing. Broken windows, and people running.
She nodded toward the television. “What’s all this, then? If the military knocked out all the bombs, what happened to all these people? How did so many people get hurt?”
Sheldon’s momentary grin vanished. “Panic. When the missile warnings went out, a lot of people just lost their minds. They all thought they were about to be blown to kingdom come. They freaked out, ran for the hills, barricaded their doors. All the crazy things that people do when they think they’re about to be killed.”
His eyes darted to the Japanese couple he’d spoken to a few minutes earlier. “That gentleman over there told me that some kids in Alameda torched a whole strip mall. The cops didn’t get there in time to stop the fire, but they did manage to nab some of the firebugs. Turns out that the ringleader convinced his buddies that some kinds of missiles are attracted to heat sources. I guess they thought the fire would lure the bombs away from their neighborhood.”