John Birmingham - Without warning

‘I’m sorry, sailor. What’s your name? I didn’t catch it in the rush before.’

‘Seaman Horvath, sir.’

‘Okay. Good work, Horvath. Take a break. I suspect I’ll be a little while.’

Stale sweat, fading perfume, and air re-breathed so many times it tasted sick and wrong. The contrast with his own headquarters couldn’t have been starker. Ritchie hit the corridors of the state capitol and ran headlong into mayhem. Spiralling turmoil seemed to be the general operating principle, the sort of witless hysteria you might expect on amateurs night at a Chechen bordello. Ritchie was buffeted by staffers and aides as they double-timed from office to office. A woman swerved to miss him, all elbows and high heels, and crashed into a copying machine that had apparently been pushed into the hallway. She spilled a couple of hundred loose-leaf pages over the carpet, cursing like a chief petty officer as she dropped to the floor to gather them up.

Hundreds of voices competed in the cramped space as people spoke over and past each other, all of them convinced their own particular order, request or fragmented rumour was the most important piece of that moment’s puzzle. The media were everywhere, wolf packs of TV and print reporters threading through the upheaval, firing up shoulder-mounted cameras and thrusting microphones into the face of anybody who seemed remotely responsible for anything. Ritchie gripped his briefcase a little harder and pushed forwards lest -

‘Admiral. Yo! Admiral, is the military taking over? Is there going to be martial law?’

And before he could dive into a side passage or broom closet, one of the packs had suddenly fallen on him. Bright white light seared the backs of his eyes, temporarily blinding him and forcing him to squint against the harsh glare.

‘Admiral, are you here to take over? Are you going to run the emergency response?’

Ritchie couldn’t see who was asking the damn fool questions, but he could sense a sudden press in the crowd around him as maybe a dozen or more reporters turned their attention towards the only symbol of authority in the immediate area: a man in a short-sleeve khaki Navy uniform sporting four stars on his collar. A jabbering crush of journalists surged towards him and, without thinking, he barked out an order.

‘Stand back, please. Have some dignity, would you!’

Ah, damn it… He’d reacted instinctively, allowing his dismay and surprise at the chaotic scene to get the better of him. But to his relief, it actually seemed to work. There was a noticeable lessening of the disarray immediately around him and Ritchie made an impulse decision to go with it.

‘First off, drop the lights, please. I’m not answering any questions standing here like a piece of roadkill in the spotlight. Secondly, hell no – I’m not here to take over. What’s up with you people? You’re not children, so stop acting like them. Governor Lingle asked me here this evening to discuss what aid the armed forces of the United States of America might render to the civil power. And that is it. I don’t declare martial law. I don’t give orders – I follow them. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to do just that.’

Before he could step off and continue his journey, however, a small bird-like woman with enormous black hair pushed a microphone into his path. ‘What can you tell us about what’s happened on the mainland, Admiral?’ she asked. ‘Have the military been monitoring the phenomenon? What are you going to do about it?’

Ritchie was tempted to push past her, but he couldn’t help but notice how the ambient roar that had filled the entire building just a few minutes earlier had died away completely. A flicker of colour behind the phalanx of reporters answered any questions he might have had about why. He could see himself on a television monitor in a room across the hall. This was probably going out live across the island. Possibly around the world. The urge to sit down, sigh and rub his eyes was nearly overwhelming, but these people needed leadership and certainty just as much as any bunch of kids taking fire from the enemy. In the absence of anyone to provide that leadership, the buck seemed to have fetched up at his feet for the moment. The admiral didn’t see any point in fudging the issue. He slowly bent down and carefully placed his briefcase on a desk, the black, dead eyes of the TV cameras following every move. It gave him time to compose his thoughts. When he stood up again he spoke into near silence.

‘Something terrible has happened back home,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me – my family is originally from New Hampshire… I can’t tell you a lot of what you need to know right now. I can’t say exactly what has happened, how or why. But you are right. We have been looking hard at this thing, throwing every asset we have at it. We’ve lost some more people in doing that, but I want to emphasise one very important point: much of our armed forces were outside of the continental US as of this morning. They remain intact and ready to make any sacrifice, to take any action necessary to protect you, the American people who are listening to this. Our friends and allies are helping us too, and with that help we will get through this. I promise you.’

A beat of half a second’s silence followed his speech before the media pack erupted again, firing questions and demands for information at him. He was just about to wave them away when a booming Southern accent cut through the pandemonium.

‘That’ll be all for now, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You heard the admiral – he does have a very important meeting to get to. Governor Lingle will address you all live right after it. And no, I can’t say for sure when that will be, but you’ve definitely got a couple of hours to go get your horses fed and watered.’

The man’s voice was so powerful, his delivery so sure, it quelled the incipient press riot almost immediately. Ritchie was grateful, but bemused. As a resident of the islands, he was familiar with some of the public faces of the state administration, even though Governor Linda Lingle had not long been in office. But this massive, roaring bear of a man was new to him, and Ritchie didn’t see how he could have missed such a figure – or a voice.

He was impeccably, if heavily, dressed in a three-piece, blue pinstriped suit and he took Ritchie gently but firmly by the elbow and propelled him through the ruck of journalists. ‘Keep smiling,’ the man muttered. ‘Don’t let your fingers get anywhere near their mouths. And check to see if you still have your wallet and watch on the other side.’

His self-appointed guardian operated as a gentle but unstoppable battering ram, carving a path not just through the crush of reporters and cameramen, but on through the throngs of civil servants beyond them, many of whom stood and gawped at Ritchie when he passed by, almost as if he were some kind of celebrity.

‘Guess I’ve had my fifteen seconds of fame,’ the admiral said.

‘Not if you got any more performances like that up your sleeve,’ his companion replied somewhat grimly. ‘Wish I could get a few others to turn it on like that. Jed Culver, by the way. Of the Louisiana Bar. Originally – I run a consultancy out of DC of late.’

Ritchie awkwardly swapped his briefcase from one hand to the other and they shook. ‘Admiral James Ritchie, Mr Culver. You didn’t sound like a local boy.’

Culver steered him around a corner and past a couple of security guards. The two uniforms were doing a good job of pissing off a dozen or more staffers who insisted they had good reason to be admitted to the inner sanctum. That’s what this part of the building felt like. It was less crowded, much quieter, and events didn’t seem to be spinning out of control quite so badly here.