Trident Code

EPILOGUE

Lana sat with Galina and Jeff Jensen at a large oval table in a secure conference room at CyberFortress, where they’d been working together since the seas stopped rising three weeks earlier. World leaders said earth was now in a “Post-Flood Era,” though “flood” felt inaccurate to Lana and most other scientists because it suggested the water that had surged across so many coastlines and overtaken so many cities would eventually recede. That was not going to happen in anything short of geologic time.

The six glaciers of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet had been ruthlessly unsettled by the nuclear strike and might well have reached a tipping point that could lead to the loss of the entire WAIS and the eleven-foot rise in sea level. There was no question that the missile strike directly on Thwaites Glacier had sent it moving in fits and starts to the sea. Four feet of sea-level rise had been recorded so far, even more than scientists had feared. But Thwaites appeared to have stabilized, which was to say that it was still moving toward the Amundsen Sea but at a reduced rate. “Appeared to” was the language of uncertainty that kept scientists, political leaders, and informed citizens on tenterhooks.

The death toll in the U.S. was estimated at 230,000, mostly from widespread drowning, though thousands had died of thirst and starvation in the ensuing mayhem. More would likely die from dysentery and other rapidly spreading diseases. Then there was the long-term impact of poisonous radiation spreading across the globe.

At least the number of fatalities could be estimated. The damage to the country’s infrastructure was incalculable. Many trillions of dollars, at least. The damage was so extensive — and still getting surveyed — that nobody could estimate it more accurately so soon after the catastrophe.

The Eastern Seaboard and West Coast had taken the hardest hits as the added weight to the oceans from the massive release of ice affected earth’s rotation, forcing its gravitational field northward. The subsidence of so much land along the Eastern Seaboard, which had been exacerbated by the drought-driven pumping of groundwater in recent years, compounded the damage from rising seas. More than ten million Americans had been forced from their homes in that part of the country alone. The central and southern California coast was also flooded, displacing six million and drowning at least twenty thousand. Rescue workers were still dredging for bodies along both of America’s coastlines.

Lower Manhattan appeared lost forever, its poorest residents now crowded into shelters; their wealthier counterparts had fled to their second or third homes in dryer locales. While the value of the U.S. dollar was fluctuating wildly — measured against the Russian ruble, now the currency of choice worldwide — it could still buy a lot, but not luxurious apartments in a city in which absolutely none were available.

There was even talk of moving the nation’s capital. Giant sump pumps had yet to drain most of the water from the National Mall. Many government offices, including the President’s, had already moved to more secure enclaves inland.

More than $400 billion worth of Miami real estate, including the city’s iconic waterfront high-rises, had become complete write-offs with the flooding undermining the structural integrity of the buildings to such an extent that one had already toppled into the sea. Others were leaning at Pisa-like angles.

Bad as conditions were in the U.S., Asia faced far greater crises. Four of the hardest-hit cities were in China: Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, and Ningbo had suffered more than a million deaths. Fifteen million residents of those cities now found themselves homeless, starving, and dying by the thousands every day. Those tragedies were trumped only by the twin catastrophes of Dhaka, Bangladesh and Kolkata, India, where accurate body counts — certainly of many millions — might never be known, for the flooding that had claimed those low-lying cites also swept innumerable dead out to sea.

South America and Europe were still reeling, too. The latter was besieged not only by internally displaced citizens but also by a massive number of refugees from Africa. Most European countries had tried to close their borders, if they still had them. Hardest hit, of course, was the Netherlands, with more than 60 percent of the country now underwater, where all those fields and towns and cities were destined to remain. Even the nation’s sophisticated system of dikes, dams, floodgates, and pumping stations had not withstood the towering tidal surges that came with the four-foot rise in sea levels.

Neither had the Thames Barrier in London, where raging currents had rushed down the city’s historic streets, drowning thousands.

Down Under was no different. Following storm surges the distinctive roof of Sydney’s famed opera house now rose from the flooded harbor like the dorsal fins of giant sharks, as if those carnivorous beasts had grown large on the feeding grounds of that dying city.

It was difficult to point to any place on earth that remained unaffected, though Russia had escaped relatively unscathed. Which had led to a wholly different form of finger-pointing. Furious leaders from across the globe had been charging for weeks that Russia had nurtured the cyberterrorist who had turned the earth into a charnel house. Russia leaders, including its outspoken President, had just as vehemently denied the accusations, allowing only that “a terribly misguided rogue patriot might have wreaked such havoc.”

Lana and her team had not found a smoking gun to prove otherwise; the trail in Oleg’s computer had turned cold. Even worse, they realized the files for the technology that over time would have sucked carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — and stopped the deadly thawing — had been deleted by a virtual trip wire in the mastermind’s laptop.

“It was his final ‘fuck you’ to the world,” Galina said, sitting back.

“Would he really have done that?” Lana could hardly believe anyone would have taken such world-changing — world-saving—knowledge to the grave.

“Control freak, in everything,” Galina replied, repeating words Lana had heard from her before.

Despite the outcry and opposition, Russia had emerged as the world’s preeminent power. The U.S. still had the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, but was so consumed with delivering emergency relief to its citizens, while trying to maintain the integrity of its vastly shifting borders, that it could hardly mount a challenge to Russia’s overnight hegemony.

Most of the U.S. Army had been deployed to try to maintain order. Breakdowns of every type were threatening the lives and livelihoods of almost all Americans. And with interstate and local highways underwater, the Air Force was making food drops all along the nation’s coastlines, which had led to wild gunfights over the scarce provisions.

Lana had hoped for a breather after the Delphin’s sinking and Dernov’s death, which had been by the most medieval means possible. A video of his demise in a skull crusher had been posted on YouTube. But she and others in the intelligence community were witnessing a great unsettling spread across the world. Populations were on the move, hundreds of thousands in boats seeking homes wherever they could. Despite its problems, America remained the preferred destination for millions — and the target of terrorists whose hatred of the U.S. had only been whetted by the country’s sudden vulnerabilities.

Only this morning Deputy Director Holmes had tasked Lana and her team with tracking the chatter of radical Islamists. Holmes had informed them the NSA had intercepted communications that made their violent intentions known, but not their precise targets or tools. “They did it in the most oblique language,” he’d explained. “It’ll make sense when you read the briefing paper I’ve had prepared for you.”

The paper noted several jihadist references to a “new” weapon for suicide bombers, which now had Lana, Galina, and Jeff researching what could possibly constitute the latest development in suicide bombs. In just the past year and a half, jihadists had gone so far as to stuff a nuclear weapon into a backpack.

Could it actually get worse than that?

Lana had her doubts. And jihadists weren’t above using disinformation against their enemies. They’d become savvy enough to provide it in heavily encrypted communications, with the understanding that the harder the threat was to decipher, the more it might be valued.

But she and her colleagues could take no threat lightly, not after witnessing worldwide devastation from the lethal combination of cyberattacks and kinetic warfare.

Personally, Lana felt fortunate. Her family had not only survived, it had thrived. Don was living with Emma and her, along with Esme, Tanesa, and Esme’s sister and her four children. Esme and her sister’s homes in Anacostia had been destroyed in the flood, and even when their insurance money arrived, which was slow in coming for claimants everywhere, the women would be hard-pressed to find affordable housing. But they didn’t need to: Lana wouldn’t hear of their displacement. Her large house finally felt fully used, and her guests were welcome as long as they needed shelter.

So was Don, she recognized more every day. Last weekend he’d taken her for a cruise on Chesapeake Bay. At first Lana refused to entertain the idea of pleasure boating. But Don told her they’d combine work and fun because he’d contracted with the navy to inspect smaller harbors on Maryland’s central shore for newly submerged pilings that could scuttle watercraft.

Don and Lana had motored out on a thirty-four-foot, aluminum hull boat that the navy had stripped of its .50 caliber and 7.62 machine guns, along with the forty-millimeter grenade launchers.

“Too bad,” Lana had joked when he’d told her the military had figured he could do without the heavy weaponry.

The day was brilliantly sunny and unusually warm for mid-November. After Don checked on three harbors, they stood gazing at a sailboat in the distance.

“You envious?” she asked.

“Not at all. I’m with you.” He slipped his arm around her back. “I’m never going to let you go,” he added softly.

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she replied. “It’s Emma. She’s growing closer to you. She needs you. I never would have believed that before you came back, but she does.”

“Me either. And it kills me that I missed so much of her growing up. I was a fool. Believe me, I could never leave you guys again.”

She slipped out of his grip, but turned to look him in the eye. “You vowed never to leave me once before.”

“I’m a different man now. I hope you can see that.”

And he was different, it was true. He was brave and loving, but most of all he was with her and the child they had borne.

She took his face in her hands and kissed him.

Three hours passed before they noticed the sun dipping below the western shoreline.

“We better get back,” Don said.

“I think we’ve already started,” Lana replied, smiling.