Defeat (5 page)

“
She’s right.
Let’s go.”

The restaurant staff at the top
were of little help. They had heard the sirens, had covered
themselves as best they could, had seen the flash through closed
eyes and through the cracks of closed doors, and had witnessed a
mushroom cloud from the direction of Kaiserslautern. It was
definitely nuclear.

They had no contact with anyone.
No network was up for phones or computers.

Worse, the electric tram that
brought tourists up the side of the mountain had stopped in a bad
spot. If anyone survived in the tram, they would have to clamber
twenty or thirty feet down to get to a level spot, and would have
to negotiate several sheer drops to get back to any kind of path.
Coming up would be even more challenging.

The staff were preparing climbing
ropes to head down to rescue them.

“
What now?”
Wolfgang asked the American soldier.

“
Let’s give it a
few minutes. I’m going to go up to the highest spot and try again,”
Captain Wlazlo replied.

They followed him out of the
restaurant and up into the ruin that stood atop the hill. Wlazlo
climbed a set of ancient stairs to the highest point that could be
reached. Wolfgang and the others waited below for him.

Captain Wlazlo tried several
things on his phone, even waving it around in the air, and grew
increasingly frustrated.

The others with Wolfgang tried
their phones, but he had already given up. There was simply no
signal. He knew nuclear weapons released electromagnetic pulses
that could destroy electronic devices, and although his phone
didn’t seem to be affected, the network system that serviced it
seemed to be down.

The Captain’s agitation grew and
he began cursing at the device in his hands.

“
It’s no good,”
Wolfgang called up to him, waggling his own phone in the air. “No
signal.”

The soldier ignored
him.

“
What now?” the
woman with them asked. The man stood next to her, they looked like
friends, Wolfgang thought, and Leah stood close to
him.

“
We go back and
get the others, and head back to ‘Slautern,” Wolfgang replied. At
least, to what’s left of it, he left out. He tried not to think
about it.

Leah looked up at the American and
asked, “What about him?”

“
He has to do
what he has to do.”

The others accepted that and
started to head back down the trail they had come up. Leah and
Wolfgang followed, but stopped when the American called out, “Hey,
wait up!”

The four waited for him, and when
he caught up, he showed them his phone. Wolfgang didn’t recognize
the app displayed on it, but he understood the no signal
icon.

“
Look, this is
classified,” the Captain explained, “but a nuke just got dropped by
someone, and I’m gonna tell you about this, classified or not.” He
paused for a second, looking at each of the other hikers, then
continued. “My phone has a link to a top secret network of
satellites. Anywhere I got a blue sky, I’ve got a signal. And now I
have nothing.”

Wolfgang shrugged, not entirely
following what the man was saying.

“
What does that
mean?” Leah asked guardedly.

“
It means the
satellites are dead.”

Wolfgang shrugged, still not
completely understanding what the man was explaining. But it didn’t
matter. He had a responsibility to get the others back safely, and
then he needed to go home. An image of his wife and daughter came
to mind, and he wondered if he would ever see them
again.

“
I’m going back,”
he announced simply and started running down the
mountain.

3

Jayla wanted to run after her
stupid sister, but couldn’t tear herself away from the monitor at
the same time. It led to a schizophrenic running back and forth
between the deck, yelling for her sister and returning to the den
of the cabin and trying to catch up on what was
happening.

Satellite communications were
being disrupted somehow, but the news agencies were doing all they
could to gather and communicate what was happening. No one knew
what was wrong with the satellites, but they had learned from land
lines about one of the most horrific acts of violence man could
perpetrate against man.

Details were nonexistent. They
didn’t know how many, or who had done it, but everyone knew from
the telltale mushroom clouds that nuclear weapons had been dropped.
Two were confirmed; one in Southern Germany and one in Eastern
England.

The aliens were blamed. The Soviet
Republic was blamed. Jihadists or terrorists were blamed. Even the
United States was blamed by some of the overseas agencies. But no
one knew. No one knew who had launched the nukes, no one knew why,
and no one from any government was answering any questions about
what would happen next.

No one knew how the alien shuttle
had disappeared from in front of the United Nations. More
importantly, no one knew why the aliens had left. Had they learned
of the impending nuclear war and left town? Had they started it? If
so, why?

When the questions grew too many,
Jayla broke away from the monitor and ran outside and screamed for
her sister for a while.

When she finally took a break from
the chaos in her mind and thought clearly, she decided her sister
must have hiked down to the lake. Daddy often took them there. The
trail was well marked, the lake only about four miles away, and
Jada could have easily gone down there on her own. Jayla could
scream all she wanted and it would do no good. Jada would be
completely out of earshot.

She hoped her sister would be
smart enough to return before it got dark. She ran back inside to
her monitor.

The nuclear bunkers at Vandenberg
Air Force Base were well camouflaged, converted missile silos. The
only way to them was across a field, through a circular hatch, and
down a long ladder.

Christina came out of the
evacuation tunnel into a grassy field, sounds of the Pacific Ocean
in the distance.

She loved being stationed at this
base, right on the coast and just a short trip south along the PCH
to Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful weekend drive. Other trips,
she and her husband would head north, driving to Pismo Beach or
even up to Morro Bay. It was a perfect posting.

Now, under the threat of nuclear
war, the waves and the surf she could hear seemed strangely normal,
mundane, as if Nature didn’t care about the foolish things Man was
up to.

She couldn’t see the silo
entrances, but just followed the other evacuees, going where the
security police directed them.

There were multiple silos and the
Colonel had stopped and made sure Christina came with him to the
command bunker. That made Christina more nervous than the thought
of nukes.

She wouldn’t have seen the silo if
a soldier hadn’t been standing by an open hatch directing people
down the ladder. When she stared at the ground directly beyond the
hatch, she could finally detect a mound in the earth where the main
silo doors lay buried.

It was her turn. The soldier,
Airman Anthony, said he could hold her lunch and drop it down to
her. Christina was too embarrassed to speak, and handed the bag to
the man, cradling her computer with her other hand while she tried
to negotiate the ladder. She didn’t know how and dithered at the
top of the ladder for a moment.

“
I can bring that
down for you also, ma’am,” the soldier said and reached his hand
out. She handed him the computer.

Even with two hands, the ladder
was difficult. It was not meant for frequent use, and ridges in the
metal dug into her hands as she squeezed them too tightly. She
never looked down.

The silo was dark. A few
flashlights shone and someone stood at a control panel, trying to
figure something out. Christina just tried to focus on getting
down.

Someone else must have noticed her
distress, and she heard an encouraging, “You can do it, Captain,”
from below. It made her feel like she was back in ROTC summer camp.
They had had two chances to complete the obstacle course, or wash
out, and Christina had failed the first, unable to climb the wall
at the very end.

She was last getting to the wall
on the second attempt, and her entire cadet flight stood around it,
cheering.

She never could have climbed that
wall without their support.

Towards the top, as she used every
muscle in her body to pull herself up, she peed her pants. With
twenty-six cadets cheering her, all college students like her, she
was surprised that no one teased her about it afterwards. No one
said a word. They all just congratulated her when she finished.
That was the moment she fell in love with the Air Force.

As she stepped off the final rung
at the bottom, the lights came on. She looked up the ladder and was
grateful she had come down in the dark. Looking around the lit silo
while coming down that ladder would have been terrifying. The view
from the ladder extended down a large hollow where a missile once
sat. It was at least two hundred feet deep.

Airman Anthony brought her lunch
and her computer after everyone was inside.

The thud from the closing of the
hatch sounded with an eerie finality. Christina shivered and
thought about the other silos. There were four such bunker-silos on
the base, and she wondered how many people were looking up at the
closed hatches of their silos and contemplating what their fate
might hold, just as she was doing.

The group of evacuees were led
deeper inside and through a set of blast doors. The silos
themselves could withstand a near miss, but they were told that
behind the blast doors they would be able to survive a direct hit.
Christina doubted it, but hearing the words were
reassuring.

She thought about her husband and
wondered where he was and how he was doing.

Base housing had an evacuation
plan for military dependents, but it wasn’t to any place nearly as
secure as the silo Christina stood in. Plus, John would be at work
now, and if the base were locked down, he wouldn’t even be able to
get in.

What do civilians do during a
nuclear war?

The President of the United States
of America stared at a computer screen without seeing anything on
it. It wasn’t a blur. His eyes focused. Just nothing
registered.

There was background noise. His
Chief of Staff keeping everyone away from him. Everyone who wanted
to talk to him, who wanted his approval, his opinion, his
leadership, buzzed around him, and right now he could give them
nothing.

The sound of the plane. Air Force
One zigzagging across the nation, keeping him safe, protected by a
squadron of F-35s and Protector drones.

His children, kept in the back of
the aircraft by his wife and their nanny, excited about again being
on a plane as luxurious as this one.

The image of a former President
wandering through the Rose Garden, contemplating terrible
decisions, went through his mind. He hadn’t had that luxury. He
hadn’t had the opportunity to weigh this decision, to consider his
place in history as he made that decision, to make sure he was
photographed in deep pondering.

The decision had been made for
him, essentially, by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Soviet
Republic themselves.

The Germans didn’t respond to the
destruction of Ramstein Air Force Base, but the British did to the
destruction of RAF Lakenheath. Even though both bases were
populated with American forces, the 86th Airlift Wing at Ramstein
and the 48th Fighter Wing at Lakenheath, the President had decided
to allow the local countries that had been struck to determine
their own response.

Germany had done nothing. The
nation didn’t even declare war. They simply mobilized to help the
stricken base and nearby community. Casualties would be in the tens
of thousands, and many more would die from radiation poisoning. The
whole nation united to help.

The Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom took the attack more personally. The lone British Renown
class submarine on patrol had launched its entire complement of
sixteen Trident III nuclear missiles at the Soviet Republic, a
retaliatory strike targeting key locations, like the Kremlin in
Moscow, the Kosvinsky Mountain command center, and bases in
Kostroma, Yoshkar-Ola, and Tatischevo.

It wasn’t a crippling strike. If
the Russians had stopped there, they could have recovered. It would
have taken years, probably another revolution, but they would have
recovered. They had started the war anyway, all because they
thought the United States was destroying their satellites and had
invented a fictional alien entity to cover up the attack. They
deserved to be punished. The Brits had done the right
thing.