Tess said, “We should shut down air travel too.”
Brooke said, “Is that communication? Wouldn’t that be more something that the Defense teams should handle? Or… I don’t know…”
Natesh said, “Let’s just keep it as a priority. Just write it down. Any ideas on how you would disrupt air travel?”
Brooke said, “What happened that time in Chicago? The time that they shut down all flights for a few days because air traffic control was burned down and sabotaged by an employee. Could we shut down air traffic by taking out all of those air traffic control centers?”
Henry thought and said, “Yeah. Yeah, actually that would probably work pretty well. Some aircraft would still be able to fly with their visual flight rules. But most commercial traffic flies on instruments. That means they’ll need those air traffic control centers. That’s a good idea. Although really, if we do two-thirds of these things we’re talking about, the whole country will be in mass chaos anyway. Taking out the satellites and data centers will go a long way, I think. But cutting the hard lines and central hubs like the air traffic control centers — that would seriously inhibit our ability to adapt after the satellites go down. Think everyone in a city driving without any of their GPS or stoplights working. Total gridlock. That’s what we’re talking about.”
David kept getting flashbacks to the night before. He could see Bill being carried along the sandy path to the runway and dumped into a helicopter. The more ideas people came up with on how to disrupt America’s communications, the more David thought that there was no good reason for what he’d seen last night. If Lena wasn’t CIA — if she wasn’t an American — then all this planning was for another country. David was starting to feel ill. He wanted to scream. Instead, he just kept listening to the plans.
Plans.
He didn’t yet have a plan. His father had told David and his siblings a million times as they were growing up that one must always have a plan. After David’s brother Chase had been shot in Afghanistan — it was a graze, but it had still earned him a Purple Heart — his father had amended his advice, comically, to “always have a good plan.” David needed a good plan, and fast. If every group was coming up with plans to invade America like this, David didn’t want to think about what would happen if the plans were actually put into motion.
Others must have felt his unease. Brooke said, “David, are you okay? You’ve been pretty quiet.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Just a little tired. Probably just jet lag.”
Natesh said, “Feel free to take a break. We’ve got a few weeks. You can afford to pace yourself, my friend.”
David didn’t want anyone to think anything unusual of him. He said, “I’m alright. Thanks.” He still felt ill.
The group kept going. It went on that way for the next hour. Natesh drawing out ideas from the group. David doing his best to be a poor participant. The mood was a mix of gloom and excitement. People were coming to terms with the sheer magnitude of the threat. But oddly, the group seemed to enjoy the task of planning out the war. It was an interesting intellectual exercise for people who had studied such things.
After the first hour, they took a bio break. Everyone got up, stretched their legs, and went out into the hallway towards the restrooms. Other groups were out there, chatting it up. It was weirdly like high school. The consultants in the Red Cell were like kids in between class. Some were socializing. Others were talking about what each of the other groups was doing.
David and Brooke returned to the meeting room first. The others were still down the hall, conversing.
Brooke said, “How is your family?”
He looked at her blankly.
“Oh. Right. No phones. Sorry. Do you think they’re okay? I’m sure they’re okay. I’m sure Tom talked to your wife. I’m sure they’re fine.” She seemed to be a nervous talker. “How many kids did you say you had?”
“I have two girls — both young,” he said, smiling politely. He thought about his girls for a moment and the smile faded. “If any of this stuff that we are discussing were really to happen…”
Brooke pressed her lips together and gave him a sympathetic look. She shook her head. “I know. Even the things that we’ve talked about just now. I can’t imagine a world going through any of that. My grandfather was in World War Two. I’ve read a lot of books about that time. The whole world was transformed overnight. Car factories became war machine factories. There were tens of millions dying. The atrocities that people took part in around the world. I mean, can you imagine that happening in a civil society today?”
“Depends what you mean by a civil society, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m sure that plenty of Germans involved in the Holocaust atrocities were civil before they were put into that situation. Civil can mean a lot of things. They may have been polite or kind or clean or wealthy or proper. But when the war was on and they got in a uniform and were put in a group and told to pull a switch, they did it. War and groupthink can be a hell of a thing…”
She looked appalled. “Well, I would never—”
David said, “I’m sure you wouldn’t, Brooke. Not with what you know now and the way you’ve likely been raised. All I’m saying is that people, if put into the right set of circumstances, can do things that they never would have imagined. I mean, if you look at other events of World War Two, even our country, which I think always tries to act with the noblest of intentions, did some things — the fire bombings, the nuclear weapons — that seem unthinkable when you read about them today. I’m still having a hard time believing the premise of this project. I keep thinking that this is just going to turn out to be a paper exercise. I guess I’m half hoping that will be the case. Because these things that we’re talking about. These plans. It is like World War Two all over again. But this time our country would be the battlefield.”
Brooke said, “You keep taking this to a pretty dark place. I guess that sitting here in these air-conditioned meeting rooms, it’s hard for me to fully think of this as a real probability. Maybe that’s it. Maybe — like you said — I just don’t really believe that any of this stuff could really happen. You think it could really get that bad? I mean, if the Chinese really did invade?”
David wanted to talk to her about what he’d seen last night, but thought better of it. Instead, he said, “A few years ago, I remember hearing this reporter talk about her time in Rwanda. She went and interviewed a bunch of people that were involved in the genocide there. She spoke with people on both sides. The Hutus and the Tutsis. Before the violence broke out, many of them were neighbors — friends, even. She talked to this one guy. This was years after all of the people were killed there. Anyway, this guy was a godfather to one of the children he killed. He said he couldn’t explain why he did it. He didn’t know what had come over him.”
Brooke looked at him and covered her mouth.
He said, “It was like a craziness took over that country. I think that is what war must be like when it comes to your home. People become animals. They don’t reason. Don’t think. Just act on impulses. A lot of times, they are evil impulses. I think war is like a disease. When it spreads to a new land, it infects that place and the people that live there.”
Brooke said, “And what about what we are doing here? Planning how China would attack us — do you think that we are contributing to the spread of this disease? Or helping to prevent it?”