John Birmingham - Without warning

‘Governor’s office called, sir.’

Ritchie looked up from the drifts of paperwork that covered every square inch of his desk. A couple of pages had even dropped to the floor. His PA, Captain McKinney, bent forward and retrieved them.

‘Yes, Andrew? Good news, I hope?’

‘Mixed, Admiral. Curfew starts at 1800 sharp tonight. They couldn’t agree on the rationing though. But they have organised emergency flights from Tokyo and Sydney for any perishables or medical supplies that run low. The National Security Committees of both the Japanese and Australian cabinets are still meeting, but their local liaison staff have passed on messages from both prime ministers that they’ll give us whatever help we need.’

They’re the ones who’ll he needing help soon enough, thought Ritchie. But aloud he only said, ‘Well, that’s something at least. For now.’

The armed forces had considerable stockpiles of rations and medical supplies on the islands, but they didn’t store items like insulin for diabetics, or drugs for cancer treatment or a dozen other common maladies. Ritchie couldn’t help wondering just how much of a supply of antidepressants there was in Hawaii, and how many people were likely to kill themselves or suffer heart attacks or stress-related strokes in the next few days. Given the number of tourists from the mainland here, probably lots.

Nearly two-and-a-half decades earlier, he’d written his masters dissertation at Annapolis on the navy’s crisis management at Pearl Harbor. He’d been scathing of their efforts on 7 December, 1941. Now, faced with his very own calamity, he had to wonder if he would have done any better. There was just so much to do and so little to do it with. Events had accelerated to a point where he would possibly never catch up.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ he grunted, dismissing young McKinney, just as an officer in Army greens appeared at his door.

‘Colonel Maccomb, Admiral. I have your updates if you have a moment.’

Ritchie didn’t, but waved the man in anyway. Maccomb looked like he had run all the way over from the 500th Military Intelligence Brigade – a decent hike in the midday heat of the equatorial sun. PACOM was just months away from taking possession of a new headquarters, the Nimitz-MacArthur Pacific Command Center, which would have centralised everybody in one modern facility. It looked like they’d be sticking with the old campus now, however, necessitating a lot of time wasting as his subordinates remained scattered about all over the island.

‘Sit down, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Give it to me as quickly as you can without losing track of the story.’

The intelligence officer nodded brusquely, snapped a sheaf of paper in his hand and worked down a series of bullet points. ‘Both of our alliance partners in the AOR have either activated their treaties, or will have within twenty-four hours. Land elements of Japan’s Self Defence Force have been recalled to barracks, their naval forces are making preparations to put out to sea, and the air force is already flying CAP over the home islands. The Aussies have called up their Reserves and moved all of their remaining high-readiness forces onto alert -’

‘Remaining?’

‘Yes, sir. They have a special forces group, a squadron of Hornets and a naval task force in the Gulf with us, for Iraq.’

Ritchie nodded.

‘All of the other regional powers have gone to varying states of high alert,’ Maccomb continued. ‘Taiwan has been placed under martial law and the armed forces there have put Plan Orange into effect. South Korea has declared that a curfew will come into effect as of 2200 hours tonight. Their forces and ours are ready, watching the DMZ, but Pyongyang is sitting very, very still. There’s been nothing on their media at all.’

‘And China?’

Maccomb gnawed at the inside of his mouth like a man with a lifelong chaw habit, before replying. ‘They’ve put a lot of troops onto the streets, sir, and our satellite cover shows a lot of activity around the Taiwan Strait batteries, but the force projection capabilities they do have remain dormant for the moment. They’re as spooked as anyone, and they know we still have the forces in theatre to check them if necessary.’

Ritchie nodded, feeling a headache building behind his eyeballs. ‘That’s a dreadfully dangerous amount of hardware and armed men moving around.’

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Maccomb. ‘It is.’

‘It just reached out and took him,’ said Kwan, a little breathlessly. ‘Like, I dunno, like a sort of liquid metal blob or something. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen.’

Musso nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak just yet. His heart was still going like a rat in a trap, and he recognised the hollow, shaky feeling of having dodged a bullet, or something just as nasty. Musso had been a Marine for longer than he had been anything else in his life. He knew war from the inside, the way an addict knows their poison. He knew what it was like to make a ball of himself, tight and small, like a clenched fist, as death zipped like a swarm of bees through the air all around him. He knew too well the fragility of the human body, the way that war respects not age, not courage, gender, righteousness, intelligence or any of the limitless personal touchstones that everyone thinks will get them through, just before everyone starts dying. He had held in his arms grown men, reduced to bloodied rags and cooling meat by a few dumb grams of flying metal. He had carried a little Somalian girl in his hands, no more than two she would have been, her poor tiny body burnt and disintegrating as he ran for a medic. He knew the filth and horror of war as a contagion buried just beneath the surface of his own skin. He knew fear.

But he had never known it as he had in the few seconds after Eladio Nuсez was consumed. Fear like a rancid, suppurating pustule that suddenly burst all sweet and bilious in his guts, flooding his mouth and throat and stomach with a distillation of terror in its primal state. He was going to take a few moments to get over it.

The Cubans, he saw, had freaked the hell out, but were holding it together under the lash of Nuсez’s deputy, Captain someone-or-other. Musso couldn’t recall his name. His own people were no less upset, although they were hiding it a little better. Everyone had withdrawn back up the road towards Guantanamo, pulling over to the side about five hundred metres from their original position. The energy wave hadn’t altered in the slightest.

Musso released a ragged breath. ‘Okay. As of now, nobody gets within five hundred metres of that thing, okay? I can’t tell the Cubans what to do, of course, but I’m guessing they won’t argue.’

Kwan nodded and looked around for the nameless captain. ‘I don’t even know if he speaks English, sir.’

‘Me neither, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘Get someone to translate. Your sergeant, Gutteres, he’s sharp. Put him on liaison if you can spare him.’

‘Guilio’s specialty is binary nerve agents. I don’t think I’ll be needing him,’ she replied flatly.

Kwan saluted and turned away to find their new translator. Musso took a sip of chilled sports drink from an insulated bottle. They had withdrawn to a spot on a slight rise where a small clearing allowed all of the vehicles to pull off onto the shoulder. The Americans still tended to their equipment, attempting to take readings from something that their equipment told them wasn’t there. The Cubans had gathered into a loose line under the watchful, if anxious, gaze of their latest commanding officer. They were sure getting through them at a fair clip.

Musso calmed his breathing. His heart rate had dropped back to something a little more reasonable and the unpleasant low-grade voltage that had been buzzing away just under his skin had finally died down. He couldn’t help but wonder where Nuсez had gone. If anywhere. That thought led naturally to thoughts of his wife and kids and what had happened to them. His stomach turned over again. Another slug from the drink bottle and he put it away, pushing himself off the side of the Humvee and walking over to his radio man, determinedly trying to ignore his personal anxieties.