Robert Sawyer: Triggers

Susan pulled her door shut and shouted to the driver, “Lima Tango, go, go, go!”

Kadeem Adams knew he was in Washington—God damn it, he knew it. When they’d brought him here from Reagan, he’d seen the Washington Monument off in the distance giving him the finger, but…

But in every fiber of his being, he felt like he was in another place, another time. A cruel sun hung high overhead, and countless bits of burnt paper, ash, and debris swirled about him—a ticker-tape parade commemorating the destruction of the village.

Not again.

Sweet Jesus, why couldn’t it stop? Why couldn’t he forget?

The heat. The smoke—not quite the smell of napalm in the morning, but bad enough. The relentless drone of insects. The horizon shimmering in the distance. The buildings torn open, walls collapsed to rubble, rude furniture smashed to kindling.

His right arm ached, and so did his left ankle; it could barely support his weight. He tried to swallow but his throat was dry and his nostrils were clogged with sand. His vision was suddenly obscured, so he wiped a hand in front of his eyes, and his palm came away wet and red.

More sounds: helicopters, an armored vehicle moving along the dirt road crunching wreckage beneath its tracks, and—

Yes, always, overtop of everything, unending.

Screams.

Babies crying.

Adults wailing.

People shouting—cursing—praying—in Arabic.

The cacophony of a ruined place, a ruined culture.

Kadeem took a deep breath, just like Professor Singh had taught him to. He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and picked an object in the room here at Luther Terry Memorial Hospital, focusing his attention on it and nothing else. He selected a vase of flowers—clear glass, with fluted sides, like a Roman column that had been squeezed in the middle—

—by a fist—

And the flowers, two white carnations and three red roses—

—blood-red roses—

And…and…

Glass could cut.

And—

No. No. The flowers were…

Life. Death. On a grave.

No!

The flowers were…

Were…

Beautiful. Calming. Natural. Unspoiled.

Deep breaths. Trying to relax. Trying to be here, in this hospital room, not there. Trying, trying, trying…

He was here, in DC. That other place was the past. Done. Finished. Dead and buried.

Or at least dead.

Professor Singh entered the room. As always, the Sikh’s eyes went first to the vital-signs monitor, and he doubtless noted Kadeem’s elevated pulse, his increased respiration, and—Kadeem looked himself and saw that his blood pressure was 190 over 110.

“Another flashback,” Singh said, as much diagnosis as question.

Kadeem nodded. “The village again.”

“I am so sorry,” Singh said. “But, if we’re lucky—and we both deserve some of that—today’s the day we may be able to do something about this. I’ve just come from seeing Dr. Gaudio. Your final MRIs are fine. She says we can go ahead with the procedure.”

The same hospital, but another room: “Ready, Mr. Latimer?” asked one of the two orderlies who had just entered.

Josh Latimer was more than ready; he’d been waiting many months for this. “Absolutely.”

“What about you, Miss Hennessey?” the other orderly asked.

Josh lolled his head, looking over at the daughter he’d recently been reunited with after a thirty-year separation.

Dora seemed nervous, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d be better off after this operation, but—there was no denying it—she’d be worse off. Parents often made sacrifices for their children, but it was a rare child who was called upon to make a sacrifice as big as this for a parent. “Yes,” she said.

One orderly went to the head of each gurney. Josh’s was further from the door, but his orderly started pushing him first, and he passed close enough by his daughter to reach over and touch her arm. She smiled at him, and just then she reminded him of her mother: the same round head, the same astonishingly blue eyes, the same lopsided grin. Dora was thirty-five now, and her mother would have been sixty-one, the same age as Josh, if breast cancer hadn’t taken her.

They made an odd train, he knew, as they were pushed along: him as the locomotive, thin, with white hair and beard; her as the caboose, still a little on the hefty side despite dieting for months to get in shape for the operation, her long brown hair tucked into a blue cap to keep it out of the way. They happened to pass the door marked “Dialysis.” Josh had spent so much time in there he knew how many tiles were in the ceiling, how many slats in the blinds, how many drawers in the various cabinets.

They continued down the corridor, and Josh was pushed feet-first into the operating room, followed by Dora. The orderlies joined forces to transfer him to one of the surgical tables and then her to the other. The second table wasn’t normally here; it was mounted on wheels. Overhead was a glassed-in observation gallery that covered two adjacent sides of the room, but its lights were off.

The surgeon was present, along with her team, all in their green surgical garb. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “Welcome, Josh. Hello, Dora. We’ll start by putting you both under. All right? Here we go…”

Secretary of Defense Peter Muilenburg—a broad-shouldered sixty-year-old white man with silver hair and hazel eyes—stood looking at the giant illuminated world map stretching the length of the subterranean room at the Pentagon. Above the map, a large red digital timer counted down. It currently read 74:01:22. In just over three days, Operation Counterpunch would commence.

Muilenburg pointed at the big screen, where the string “CVN-76” was displayed in the middle of the Arabian Sea. “What’s the status of the Reagan?” he asked.

“She’s making up for lost time,” replied a female analyst, consulting a desktop monitor.

“We need the aircraft carriers in position within sixty hours,” Muilenburg said.

“It’ll be tight for the Reagan and even tighter for the Stennis,” the aide replied, “thanks to that hurricane. But they’ll make it.”

Muilenburg’s BlackBerry buzzed, and he pulled it out of his blue uniform pocket. “SecDef,” he said.

“Mr. Secretary,” said a woman’s voice. “This is Mrs. Astley.” The next words were always, “Please hold for President Jerrison,” followed by silence, so he lowered the handset a bit, and—

He quickly brought the phone back to his ear. “Repeat, please.”

“I said,” the president’s secretary replied, and Muilenburg realized that her voice was shaking, “Mr. Jerrison has been shot. They’re rushing him to LT right now.”

Muilenburg looked up at the bank of red digits, just in time to see it change from 74:00:00 to 73:59:59. “God save us,” he said.

There were always two members of the Secret Service Countersniper Team on the roof of the White House; today one of them was Rory Proctor. The chill wind cut through him. He was holding his rifle in gloved hands and walking back and forth, scanning the grounds between here and the Ellipse, the fifty-two-acre public park south of the White House fence. The Washington Monument was visible, but even from this elevated position, Proctor couldn’t see the Lincoln Memorial, where all of the action had been taking place, although he was listening intently to the chatter in his earpiece.

Proctor was so used to scanning for things in the distance, he didn’t pay much attention to the rooftop, which had a stunted colonnade around its edges and a few potted shrubs. But a dove happened to catch his eye as it flew into view. It landed a few yards from him, by a squat metal enclosure at the base of one of the rectangular chimneys on the south side. There was some odd scuffing of the white roofing tiles in front of the enclosure. He took one more look at the grounds on the south side, saw nothing of interest, then walked over to look at the enclosure.