“We have to talk, Darryl. Or, well, maybe we don’t. I’m still getting used to how this all works, but…”
“Yes, ma’am?”
She paused, again having second thoughts. After all, Darryl was one of Jerrison’s trusted associates; the president had chosen him to go with her to California. She searched Jerrison’s memories for any indication that he’d taken Darryl into his confidence about Counterpunch.
Nothing.
Of course, Darryl might still be in on it; Bessie doubted the president briefed members of his protective detail personally. And so, she decided, she’d find out the old-fashioned way: she’d ask. “Darryl, does the name Counterpunch mean anything special to you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It didn’t to me either, until yesterday, but…God, I don’t even know where to begin. Can you—can you pluck it from my mind?”
There was a pause, then: “I’m not finding anything, ma’am.”
“Counterpunch? Are you sure? I know all about it.”
“Nothing is coming to me. Where did you hear about it?”
“Well, I didn’t, actually. It’s something I learned about from the president’s memories.”
“Oh,” said Darryl. “Well, if I understand what Dr. Singh said, ma’am, the linking of minds is what he called ‘first-order.’ You can read the president’s memories, and I can read your memories, but I can’t read through you to his memories.”
“Oh, I see,” said Bessie. “Then I guess I just have to tell you.”
“That’d be simplest, ma’am.”
She took a deep breath. “Operation Counterpunch is what they’re planning to do,” she said.
“Who?”
“The president. The military.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And, ma’am, what is it they’re planning?”
“To destroy Pakistan.”
“I—what?”
“To destroy Pakistan,” she said again, and this time she did clearly see Darryl’s eyebrows go up. “To wipe all hundred and seventy million people there off the face of the Earth.”
“God,” he said, although it was more breath than voice. “Why?”
“I—I don’t know how to put this.”
“Was it Jerrison’s idea?”
“No. No, it was presented to him two months ago, by um…” She had trouble with the name; she’d recalled it repeatedly now, but wasn’t quite sure how to make the initial sounds for it. “Um, Mr. Muilenburg. He’s the, um—”
“The secretary of defense,” said Darryl. “Go on.”
“That’s right. He came to see the president, and laid it all out for him. Their conversation went something like this…”
Silver-haired Peter Muilenburg sat on one of the short couches in the Oval Office, and Seth Jerrison sat on the other one, facing him, the presidential seal on the carpet between them.
“And so,” Muilenburg said, “our recommendation is simply this: we wipe Pakistan off the map.”
Seth’s mouth dropped open a bit. “You can’t do that.”
“Of course we can, sir,” replied Muilenburg. “The question is whether we should.”
“No,” said Seth. “I mean, you can’t. Nuclear weapons are dirty; if you take out Pakistan, you’re bound to send fallout into the surrounding countries. Iran and Afghanistan to the west, China to the north, India to the east.”
Muilenburg nodded. “That would be true if we were proposing using nukes. But the new Magma-class bombs don’t give off any appreciable radiation, and the electromagnetic pulse they produce is much less devastating than that generated by a nuke.”
“It sounds like those terrorist bombs,” Seth said.
“Where do you think they got the technology?” Muilenburg replied evenly. He held up a hand. “Not that we gave it to them, of course. The initial research was another one of those cold-fusion notions, coupled with some interesting new physics out of Brookhaven. No one quite realized the destructive potential at first; when we did, it was classified beyond top secret, but enough hints and clues had already gotten out.”
“So the Chinese have this, too? And the Russians?”
“Not big bombs, like we’ve got, sir—at least, as far as we know. Which is why we have to do it now—an immediate counterpunch.”
Seth shook his head. “It’s not a proportionate response, Peter.”
“Was nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki a proportionate response to Pearl Harbor?” asked Muilenburg. “Two whole cities, full of civilians, for one Navy base? At Pearl Harbor, twenty-four hundred people died, of whom just fifty-seven were civilians; the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed a hundred times as many—almost a quarter of a million people, almost all of them civilians. Was that proportionate? No—but it ended the war. It stopped it cold. When we had the clear upper hand in 1945 against the Japanese, we used it—and we never had to fear the Japanese again.”
“But the terrorists aren’t just in Pakistan,” Seth said.
“True. But most of the al-Sajada leaders are there. And Pakistan shielded bin Laden for years; their ISI knew he was there. Yes, there are terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, but the message will be clear: if there’s another attack on American soil, we’ll take out another nation that harbors terrorists.”
“No,” said Seth. “I mean the terrorists are here. In the United States, and London, and elsewhere. They’re already here; that’s how these attacks can happen.”
“Foot soldiers. The leaders are back there.”
“In the Islamic world?” Seth said. “This isn’t a war against Islam.”
“No, it’s not,” Muilenburg said. “There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and fifty countries in which Muslims are the majority of the population. Pakistan is just a tiny part of Islam.”
“This is horrific,” Seth said. “Abominable.”
“What’s been done to us is horrific,” replied Muilenburg. “And it will go on and on unless we force them to stop, unless we show them that we will not tolerate it. We’re the last remaining superpower. It’s time we used our superpowers and put an end to this.”
Darryl listened intently as Bessie recounted the meeting between Secretary of Defense Muilenburg and the president. “And Jerrison bought into this?” he said when she was done.
Bessie nodded. “And it’s going ahead on Monday. Tomorrow.”
Darryl looked around the luxurious cottage—but a gilded cage is still a cage. “I guess there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?”
“Well,” said Bessie, “there’s not much.” She searched the president’s memories to see if he had received her letter yet; it didn’t seem so. “But,” she added, looking out the window at the snow-covered forested ground, “at least I’ve given it my best shot.”
Chapter 46
Seth Jerrison was still lying on the bed in the presidential residence at Camp David. The First Lady—Jasmine Jerrison, tall, sophisticated, refined—was sitting nearby, working on her laptop computer, which was perched on a little desk. With the exception of Agent Susan Dawson, Seth had dismissed the Secret Service from providing his protection here; he was now relying on Navy and Marine officers who had been screened by Peter Muilenburg’s staff.
There was a knock at the door. Jasmine got up and opened it. One of the Marine guards saluted her crisply. “Ma’am, an envelope for the president.”
Seth couldn’t see her face from here, but he imagined she was narrowing her green eyes. “Who’s it from?”
“Ma’am, Mrs. Stilwell insisted that it be delivered to your husband.”
“I’ll take it.”
“I promised Mrs. Stilwell that it would go to the president.”