Bobby Akart - First Strike

Tucker laughed. “Dad’s big on his hunches.”

The phone rang. It was Owen. “His ears must’ve been burning.” Lacey connected the call through the SUV’s sound system. “Hey, honey.”

“Hi, Dad.”

“Tucker? Aren’t you supposed—?”

Lacey cut him off to explain. “I decided to pick him up. I thought it would be a good idea for us to sort this out together.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” said Owen. “Listen to this. I reached out to our department that analyzes internet searches around the world. A lot of people don’t realize this, but search engines like Yahoo! have a literal pulse on the mindset of a country or locale based upon their trending searches. It’s mind-boggling what information we have access to that can be cross-referenced through search activity.

“Anyway, when you relayed Peter’s concerns, I thought I’d check with our people and have them look into Yahoo metrics for Pakistan and India. While they did, I called my buddy at Google. Face it. Google dominates outside the U.S., with like ninety-eight percent of the market share.

“Well, anyway, I heard back from both resources just now. Search terms related to the term nuclear are off the charts in both countries. And get this, on Google, one of the top five trending searches today is nuclear fallout shelter near me .”

“Wow!” said Tucker excitedly. “Uncle Peter’s right. We need to get ready.”

Lacey furrowed her brow as she turned into their neighborhood. “What do you think, Owen?”

“Well, most of the time these search results are based on media-driven hype. The airstrikes by India in Pakistan are the top news story in most countries on that side of the world. Here, there’s hardly a mention.”

Lacey pulled the truck into the driveway and opened the garage door. As she waited for it to open completely, she suddenly put the car in park. Tucker looked over at her with a puzzled look on his face. She held up one finger, indicating he needed to wait a moment.

She took a deep breath and studied herself in the mirror. Her eyes moved from side to side as if to surveil her surroundings, but in actuality, she was making sure everything around her was real and not a dream.

“Honey, are you still there?” Owen asked.

“Yes. I hate to ask this question because I’ve never wanted you to feel pressure to leave the office. Um, but what time will you be home tonight?”

Owen replied in all seriousness, “As soon as I can shut down my computer and walk out the door, I’ll be on my way.”

She glanced at the time. It normally took Owen an hour or a little longer to travel from Sunnyvale out to their house in the hills overlooking Hayward.

“Tucker and I are gonna run to Safeway. We should be back about the same time you get here.”

“Are you gonna pick up dinner?” asked Owen.

Lacey reached up to close the garage door again. “Something like that. Love you!” She disconnected the call and backed out of the driveway.

“Mom, what’s the plan?”

Lacey set her jaw. “We’ve got some shopping to do, son.”

Monday, October 21

Oval Office

The White House

It had been a long day, and President Helton was exhausted. He’d just been briefed on the airstrikes at the Pakistani nuclear facility. He was beginning to be concerned the American military presence in the region was being stretched too thin. They simply didn’t have sufficient assets deployed to fight a conflict in the Middle East and defend their Indian allies in South Asia. Tensions needed to be tamped down, and he tasked his most loyal cabinet member, the secretary of state, to handle it.

He had a scheduled meeting with the Iranian ambassador in thirty minutes. It was a rare face-to-face opportunity for the man who was capable of spewing more lies than any propagandist the president had ever met. However, because Iran stubbornly continued to block the Strait of Hormuz with no apparent achievable goal, President Helton wanted to deliver a personal ultimatum. Get out of the way, or we’re going to sink every ship in your fleet.

The Pentagon was prepared to back up the threat, and military assets were being positioned to carry out his orders. But then the government in New Delhi gummed up the works. Their preemptive attack on Pakistan wasn’t a bad idea; it was the timing that caused problems for American interests. Now, with the intelligence confirmed that Pakistan was maneuvering its nuclear warheads into position via mobile launchpads, the region was a powder keg with a short fuse.

He’d asked his advisors how bad it could get. They equivocated in their response. China was the wild card in the region. The Kashmir region, the source of the ongoing military hostilities in addition to the cultural ones, was in the Himalayas at China’s border. A ground invasion would almost certainly draw their attention and likely lead to a declaration of war by Beijing. The land was beautiful, and it had certain religious ties to the Pakistanis, but President Helton couldn’t fathom why it was worth fighting a war over. Especially a nuclear war.

To their credit, both India and China had maintained a no first use doctrine in which India promised to use its nuclear weapons only in response to Pakistan’s first strike. Pakistan had refused to issue any clear doctrine to that effect.

For years, U.S. presidents have grappled with the possibility a false-flag terrorist attack might generate a nuclear response. Through some mishap or error, the nuclear missiles could fly. An escalation in Kashmir could be another cause. Certainly, the air strikes were a very bold provocation, one that angered most world leaders.

President Helton planned on taking the lead in deescalating the conflict. He was going to ask for restraint and demand both countries come to the negotiating table to work toward a long-term fix. He would impress upon them that the last thing either government, or the world for that matter, needed was more mushroom clouds.

With this on his mind, he turned his attention to the Iranian ambassador, who was about to get a promise of his own. Get out of the Strait of Hormuz or prepare to deal with the full brunt of America’s military might.

Tomorrow, he’d deal with Pakistan and India.

Tuesday, October 22

South Asia

Pakistan convened its National Command Authority in an undisclosed location many miles from any population centers. It quietly relocated its highest government officials and their immediate families into the wilderness near Tajikistan, as far away from India as possible. Its citizens were given a siren warning the moment after the launch sequence was triggered.

In Islamabad, the nation’s capital, residents had less than twenty minutes to rush into a fallout shelter that could hold less than eight percent of the population. Those with wealth were able to buy their way into a bunker. Others had to look for basements of buildings built on a rocky landscape.

On both sides of the Pakistan-India border, across the entire subcontinent of South Asia, home to nearly two billion people, nuclear war had broken out. Virtually all the residents of these two nations were on their own as the nuclear warheads flew.

India, with a population of one-point-four billion, had more to lose in terms of human life. Fifty of its cities had populations in excess of one million. Five had over five million. Across the country, because nuclear power formed an important part of India’s energy mix, Pakistani targets included nuclear reactors and atomic power plants in addition to missile launch sites.