The Shadow Game (9 page)

‘I don't care how many windows you break. Get there,' the voice barked inside the pilot's helmet.

Lieutenant Daniela ‘Lucky' Flores and her wingman turned their F-16 Fighting Falcons west and pushed them to Mach 2, just over 2450 kilometres an hour, crashing through the speed of sound.

Four F-16s from the 113th Wing, DC Air National Guard had been ‘hot cocked' on the tarmac when news of the president's assassination broke. The ‘Capitol Guardians' were in the air in less than five minutes.

As they screamed into the sky they heard a broadcast from Andrews Air Force Base – a message not used since September 11, 2001.

‘Attention all aircraft monitoring Andrews Tower, this is a warning. I repeat: all aircraft monitoring Andrews Tower
frequencies, this is a warning. All aircraft are warned to remain clear of Class Bravo airspace. Any aircraft intruding into Class Bravo airspace will be shot down.'

Two of the F-16s were now tasked with patrolling the skies over DC. Soon they would be joined by many more. Flores and her wingman had been ordered to charge towards the vice president's plane. At Mach 2 they would haul it in inside half an hour.

‘Is America under attack?' The vice president was shaken. Although Mikaela Asta had always known that she was just one missed heartbeat away from becoming leader of the free world, nothing had prepared her for this moment. News of the president's death had been relayed to Air Force Two as she was flying back to Washington from a meeting in California.

Her chief of staff shook his head.

‘We just don't know yet,' he said. ‘But we have had two simultaneous attacks, one on the president and one on the White House. So we have to assume they are co-ordinated.'

Asta was conferring with a handful of staff inside her stateroom in the Boeing C-32. It was a surreal moment. For the first time since Kennedy an American president had been assassinated, and she was the next in line. Mikaela Asta, mother of five.

Media commentators had dubbed her the Queen of the Tea Party since she arrived in Washington in 2008, and then called her a ‘surprise pick' when Earle Jackson named her as his running mate in the 2012 campaign. But it wasn't a surprise to Asta. All
those years ago, when she was still curing homosexuals through her conversion therapy practice back in Minnesota, she'd known God had a plan for her.

She'd brought both feminine charm and northern cred to Jackson's decidedly southern Republican team. And as the president's support collapsed, Asta had been increasingly feted by the Conservative Right. Some on Fox News wistfully pondered whether she could restore American pride. Now they were about to find out.

But any sense of elation was crushed by the weight of the moment and the overwhelming feeling of vulnerability. Despite an unrivalled suite of on-board communications, they were flying blind on what this death meant. The vice president was demanding answers and there weren't any. If there was ever a moment to pray, it was now.

One of the stateroom phones rang and Asta's chief of staff picked it up.

‘It's the speaker.'

‘Morgan, thank God, what do we know?'

‘Not much.' Big Mac's familiar voice boomed down the line. ‘The drone attack on the White House was low tech; there were explosives on board but not enough to do any serious damage and there was no trace of chemical or biological weapons. The gunman who killed the president was a pro; the secret service and police haven't been able to locate the shooter's position, but it's likely to have been more than a mile from the park. Based on that the shooter has to be ex-military, but that only narrows the enemy down to just about any group of whack jobs here or offshore.'

Big Mac paused and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

‘There was one other attack,' he said. ‘On some of our military satellites.'

Asta struggled to get her head around the outrageous idea.

‘Which satellites?'

‘Two that circle the globe in tandem in a low orbit. Their code name is
Intruder
and they scoop up electronic intelligence. They eavesdrop on the communications, navigation and weapons control signals emitted by naval ships. They can pinpoint and track the position, speed and direction of all military ships at sea.'

‘How do you attack a military satellite?'

‘Well, turns out, just like you do in
Star Wars
. The satellites were hit with a directed energy weapon fired from Earth.'

‘A what?'

‘A laser, Mikaela. Our satellites were blinded by a laser. Strategic Command is still trying to work out if the damage is temporary or permanent. But one thing they do know: apart from us only two countries have militarised lasers – Russia and China.'

Asta glanced out the window and saw the comforting shape of an F-16 warplane pull up into a flanking position alongside what was now Air Force One.

‘We are going to find the people who did this,' Asta said. ‘And we are going to make them pay.'

‘We are,' Big Mac echoed. ‘But until we are certain that our nation is not about to be attacked, you're flying to Nebraska.'

‘. . . was shot and killed by an unknown assassin.'

Harry Dunkley stumbled from a dream into words he struggled to believe.

‘Just repeating, the American president is dead.'

The former journalist wiped the sleep from his eyes as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing on his bedside radio. Earle Jackson. Murdered. Another madman on the loose.

Dunkley pulled on a pair of tracksuit pants and a rugby jumper, and shuffled over to the seminary's common room. His regular breakfast companion was standing transfixed in front of the TV, as CNN hit a near hysterical pitch.

‘Police say they now believe the assassin's shot came from the thirty-eighth floor of the abandoned Book Tower in downtown Detroit, more than a mile from where the president was addressing a rally in Wigle Recreation Park.'

The priest shook his head. ‘Can you believe it? I remember when Kennedy was killed. I was still a young man, early thirties, just back from studying in Rome. Ah, JFK. We had such hopes . . .'

His voice trailed off.

‘This might sound strange, Father, but it's one of my earliest memories. I was four. I remember an old black-and-white image on a rickety TV with long legs and an oval screen. It had a T-shaped aerial on top with twirly wire around it. It was the first time I saw my mother cry.'

‘I think we all cried that day, Harry.'

Dunkley pulled a couple of lounge chairs close to the set.

‘He was a flawed man though, Father. Far from the saint many portrayed him as, the son of a ruthless tyrant, and a pathological pants-man.'

The priest laughed.

‘That's what I like about you, m'boy. You don't waste time on romance. But I've never prayed for saints to lead us. Just give me a halfway decent sinner.'

They were glued to the coverage, taking turns to dash to the kitchen before settling down with plates of toast and mugs of tea.

As news obsessives, the seminary priests subscribed to cable, allowing Dunkley and his companion to channel surf between CNN, the BBC World Service and Fox News.

They saw a replay of the vice president's plane, escorted by two fighter aircraft, flying into Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
One of the journalists who'd been on the plane said the base was the home of US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM. It was an ominous sign because its underground command centre served as a transmission point for a presidential order for nuclear war.

Next, still pictures filled the screen showing Mikaela Asta being sworn in as president by a local judge, then chairing an emergency meeting of the National Security Council via teleconference in the nuclear-proof bunker, before leaving Offutt for the flight to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington.

Dunkley was always amazed by the genius of those who produced rolling news. Most of the time he thought 24-hour news channels were a tedious echo chamber, where the same people said the same things over and over, or where a tiny incident was dissected like a sardine with a cleaver.

But when a serious story broke, the news channels were mesmerising, particularly in the US where the networks had a roster of experts who actually knew what they were talking about, and the resources to cover their nation like a blanket.

It was as the new president's plane was landing in Washington, and the countdown began to her address to the nation, that the first hints came of a disturbing new twist in an already deeply distressing day. Fox News began quoting ‘congressional sources', saying that there had been a third attack on the US that morning, this one on a military satellite. That lifted the stakes from an attack by a terror group to an act of war by a foreign power.

At 7pm Washington time the networks all switched to the White House. An exquisitely coiffured Mikaela Asta was seated at the desk where Franklin Roosevelt had received the news of
the attack on Pearl Harbor, and George W Bush had made his address on the night of September 11, 2001.

‘My fellow Americans,' Asta began, her voice as steady as her gaze. There was no hint of her usual Colgate smile today.

‘All I have I would have given gladly not to be speaking to you from this office tonight.'

With an eye to history, Asta's speechwriters had chosen to begin by recasting the opening line of Lyndon Johnson's speech to the joint sitting of congress in the wake of Kennedy's assassination.

‘There are no words to express our grief and none to describe our quiet yet unyielding anger. Today was more than an attack on one man, it was an attack on a nation. If it was an attempt to frighten or intimidate us then our adversary has grievously misjudged the character of the people of the United States.

‘The search is under way for those behind these evil acts. We will bend the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to find those responsible and bring them to justice, be they individuals or nations.'

Asta paused for a second, a neophyte president born for this moment.

‘America has been through difficult times. There are those who say that our power is waning, who believe that our time as the pre-eminent nation has passed. I remind them that there is still only one superpower on Earth.'

The president's voice was calm, but her steel-blue eyes radiated anger and resolve. This was her commander in chief moment.

‘So whoever our assailants may be, I suggest they ponder the words of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who led the attack against
us at Pearl Harbor. All you have done is awoken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.

‘We have proven that we have the courage to seek peace. Perhaps our enemies have forgotten that we also have the fortitude to wage war.

‘Tonight we mourn Earle Jackson; tomorrow we will avenge him.

‘As Psalm 144 says: “Blessed be to the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”

‘Thank you. Good night. And God bless America.'

‘I dislike that woman, she is spoiling for a fight.' The priest pressed mute on the remote as the coverage returned to another studio panel parsing every word of the speech.

Harry sat back in his lounge chair and brushed some crumbs from his borrowed rugby top.

‘That makes two of us,' he said. ‘That wasn't a speech aimed at a lone gunman or a group of terrorists. Asta is preparing her nation for war, which must mean the Yanks suspect the assassination is state-sponsored.'

‘It's more than that, Harry.' The old priest's face tightened into a grimace as he turned to the younger man. ‘I met her, maybe thirty years ago, at a conference at the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California in Berkeley.'

Dunkley was genuinely surprised. ‘I can't imagine the Tea Lady in Chief on a hippy campus in San Francisco.'

‘It was a gathering that brought together every Christian group from the most liberal to the most conservative,' the priest said. ‘Mikaela and her ilk were there because it's the kind of dialogue her type joins with the sole intention of destroying it. When I met her she was an advocate of Dominion Theology: she believed that Christians should govern America. She is a dedicated theocrat and deadly dangerous.'

Dunkley shifted in his seat to get a better view of the priest.

‘Father, without meaning to be impolite, all religions are dangerous in my view and responsible for most of the trouble and all of the wars in the world.'

‘Really?' The priest raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘Were you paying attention in the twentieth century, Harry? History's greatest criminals were Hitler, Mao and Stalin. Pol Pot could not match them for corpses, but did for evil. All erased religion and replaced it with the worship of a proselytising, messianic state. Bad men don't need God to justify mass murder.'

Dunkley felt a long forgotten surge of competitive energy as he warmed to a debate he'd been having since he was sixteen.

‘And how many deaths over millennia have there been because zealots decided to force their imagined gods on others? Your church was as brutal as any, not to mention the contemptible army of kiddie fiddler priests you seem to have spawned. How can you live with that?'

The priest lowered his eyes and Dunkley felt a stab of guilt, remembering the kindness the man had showed him.

‘It's a very fair question and I have no pat answer,' the old man said. ‘The church is a human institution and like all our
endeavours it is flawed. At times I have despaired of it and its leadership. At times I think our slow death in the West is punishment for our many sins. Yes, the church has done great evil but it has also done great good. And my faith is a different thing. It tells me to hope, even when all seems lost.'

‘Father, you are clearly a good man. Don't you ever wonder? Don't you ever doubt?'

The priest looked around the room at the photos of the fathers now passed to dust.

‘Of course I doubt. As Bertrand Russell said, the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubt. But as I approach death, every day I ask myself just one question: could I have lived a better life?'

The priest shifted his gaze back to his companion, his almond eyes blazing with intelligence.

‘And my answer to that is yes, of course. But with or without God, in or out of my frail and broken church, I will go to my grave knowing that I mostly did my best and tried to live a life for others. A life where hope always triumphed over despair.'

His voice softened.

‘And you, Harry Dunkley? If you do not drink your life away you have many years left. How do you intend to spend them?'

Harry slumped in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, the colour of a day-old newspaper, the paint beginning to crack.

‘I have no god to fall back on. So I have no idea what God's will is. I only have me and just lately I'm a bit pissed off that I've
been letting myself down. I don't have your luxury of a divinely ordained path.'

‘Son, I like you. But you are chock full of the rote beliefs atheists have about people of faith. To put it in your language you are full of shit. I don't pray for or expect a roadmap for my life. I have certain gifts and some strong beliefs. My strongest belief is that I have to make the most of those gifts. Harry, God's will is what you make it.'

The priest put his hand on Dunkley's arm. His grip was still strong and there was a fierce urgency in the old man's eyes.

‘What will you make it?'

Dunkley exhaled in a long slow breath before answering.

‘I've lost faith in the institutions that run our country and the world. I used to believe that journalism was worthwhile and noble, that sunlight was the best antiseptic, that I was uncovering the truth. But I also learned to my great cost that it was an ego trip. As you say, all humans are flawed. I screwed up my marriage and now my daughter won't talk to me.'

Gaby, his only child. She was the one person he loved unconditionally, but she had cut him off and how could he blame her? When he was in his prime as a reporter he had all but ignored her and she had not coped well with his public fall from grace. Their last conversation had ended with her stinging retort: ‘You are a pathetic disgrace.'