The War Cloud

56

Sachs heard the gunshots and called out Koz’s name. But instead of an answer she saw him suddenly lose his grip and fall toward her. She grasped the next rung of the steel ladder with one hand and swung out of the way. She watched in horror as Koz’s body hit the concrete floor at the base of the ladder far below.

She screamed. “Oh, my God!”

“I’m up here!” Above her, Marshall’s face lingered in the opening, gun in hand, but then withdrew from sight.

She froze on the ladder. She desperately wanted to crawl down to Koz and run away from that monster Marshall above her. But run to what? A world that Marshall destroyed? There was no turning back, she realized. This was either kill or be killed, and she had to keep going. Jennifer and at least a billion American and Chinese were counting on her.

Sachs willed herself up the ladder, one rung at a time, hand over hand, boot over b until she reached the opening. She wanted to stick a hand up through the space with a gun, but she needed two hands to pull herself up and over onto the steel floor.

She instantly sprang to her feet and whipped out her gun, breathing hard. She looked around cautiously, but there was no one there except for the dead radio operator sprawled against the wall, an M9 on the floor beside her.

Sachs kicked the pistol over the edge of the floor door and scanned the austere, two-story-tall turret. Dominating the chamber were something like huge loudspeakers in each of the four slanted walls. The effect was like being inside the bell tower of some monstrous cathedral from the Dark Ages — the Church of Armageddon. And the altar seemed to be a console with communications and radar instruments.

She noted the large, square radar screen with a Raytheon logo on the bezel and a large brown keyboard with four different sets of keypads grouped on it, along with the biggest metal computer mouse she had ever seen.

The whole thing looked like some Doppler weather radar. But the icons and numbers on the screen told her it was some kind of air traffic controller’s radar screen.

It showed ten arrow-like icons, and the mass they were moving toward looked like China.

The Defenders aren’t anti-ballistic missiles. They’re airborne.

And they were poised off China to shoot down any Chinese missiles.

There was a step behind her. She turned and raised her M9 as Marshall dropped down from an overhead platform, a pistol in one hand pointed at her. He was far more imposing and intimidating in person than on TV, his ice-cold blue eyes revealing an iron will of a warrior on mission, even as his cruel mouth smiled with bemused approval.

“Why, Secretary Sachs, is that a standard-issue U.S. military sidearm you’re waving at me?” he said. “I didn’t know you had it in you. Better be careful, you might hurt yourself.”

Sachs raised her gun at Marshall. “I will kill you, Marshall.”

“You know I’ve already given my life for my country,” he said, taking a step forward. “You think I’m not ready to die to see this through? I’m a patriot.”

“Of course you are, Marshall. You’re the Great American Pretender.”

“Defender, Sachs,” Marshall said sharply, his smile disappearing. “Defender.”

“Defender,” she repeated, trying to put everything together that she had seen. “You were so confident we could win this war with minimal casualties.”

“Maybe we can,” Marshall said.

The radio crackled. “Defender Ten, all clear.”

“Defender Nine, all clear.”

Sachs realized Marshall had established the secret frequency she needed to recall the Defenders. If only she could reach the radio. “You actually built your Defender system, didn’t you?”

Marshall cracked a grin. “I’ve got ten airborne COIL lasers that can pinpoint and destroy enemy missiles hundreds of miles away.”

“So you blew up Washington?” Sachs said accusingly.

Marshall grew scarily calm, but his eyes were ablaze with purpose. “It was clean, Sachs. I took out buildings. Not people.”

“What do you call four thousand Americans?”

“Not much more than 9/11,” he said. “Any reasonable president would have launched under attack. But you wouldn’t.”

“So you blew up SAC headquarters,” she said. “And you went after my daughter!”

“Something worth thinking about now, Sachs, if you want her to live.”

Marshall took another step closer, and Sachs took a step back. Suddenly she wondered why he hadn’t killed her yet.

“What do you want with her, Marshall?”

“Just a little leverage,” Marshall said, raising his gun to her head. “I might need you to make one more address about your attack on the Chinese.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, realizing that Marshall — and history — was going to blame this apocalypse on her failed leadership.

“You’re going to take a bullet for America, Sachs,” he told her. “You think the Chinese promote multiculturalism or celebrate diversity like you want your students to? You’ve seen the trends. You’ve seen the future. You really want your daughter to grow up under red skies? Or, worse, a multi-polar world of war and chaos? I have to protect western civilization before people like you piss it away.”

“How convenient,” she said. “Is that what you’re going to say the day after?”

“This is the day after,” Marshall told her. “Now hand over the gun, Sachs. We both know you can’t pull the trigger.”

She said, “Not until I can see the enemy.”

She felt the veins in her hand throb as she gripped the gun. She could barely catch her breath, her heart was racing so fast. One way or another, she told herself, she was going to take a bullet. Whether she took the shot or not, she was going to die. She had to take the shot. She had to pull the trigger.

Marshall smiled. “Those who can’t, teach,” he said, coaxing her. “Come on. Give it to me.”

Sachs, her hands trembling, started to lower her arms. He was only a few feet away now, more confident than ever, his hand swinging up with his gun.

Sachs jerked up her gun and fired three times fast, one bullet snapping his head back, the others catching him in the chest, driving him against his radar equipment. He bounced off and fell onto the liner plate floor, a stream of blood trickling into a crack like waste in a gutter.

Hands trembling, gun smoking, she dropped the pistol on the floor with a clank.

“Decapitation, Marshall. Your own philosophy.”

Marshall was lifeless. Powder burns surrounded the black hole in his forehead. His piercing blue eyes remained wide open in surprise. Sachs stood there numb, staring at Marshall, her heart sick, her stomach swelling.

The crackle of the radio broke her trance: “Defender One, update.”

Sachs staggered over to the console. She felt weak as she grasped the microphone with her hand and then saw blood on it. She looked down at her body. More blood. Somewhere along the line she already had taken a bullet. Now she had to recall the Defenders before that bullet took her last breath.