Edge of Apocalypse (4 page)

That was until this morning when Cal told him he was switching majors. From engineering to art. Just one more of his son's decisions that seemed to collide with common sense.

Joshua loved his son more than anything, more than life itself. He just didn't understand him. Cal was so much like his mother, and, yes, Joshua envied him for that. Was that it? Was it envy? That even though Cal, like his father, believed that flag and country were important, what he really wanted was to bury himself in oil paints and canvas and shut out the world? It was one of the things he loved about Abby. She had been a brilliant lawyer, and yet she could also turn off the analytical side, the duty and legal side, and bury herself in a book or an art gallery, losing herself in the nuances of color and texture and light.

Why did he have to get so angry about it? He'd promised himself that when he had kids he wouldn't be like his father--strict, demanding, perfectionistic--yet here he was, doing the same thing, making the same demands that had been made of him. Now Cal was gone, heading back to school with the echo of his father's disappointment in his ears. Joshua ached for his son and, in a strange way, ached for himself.

The ring of a cell phone suddenly broke Joshua's train of thought. He checked the personal phone function on his handheld Allfone. But it wasn't ringing and showed no incoming calls. He realized that this ring tone was the heavy metallic one.

He thrust his hand into his suit-coat pocket and retrieved another phone. This one was flat and wide, colored a deep shade of blue. It was a specially encrypted satellite phone designed only for high-level secure conversations. It didn't ring often. But when it did there was an emergency. The scramble-your-jets kind.

Joshua hit the encryption filter button and answered. "Joshua Jordan."

"Colonel Jordan," said a voice after a half second of descrambling. "This is Major Black, adjunct to the Joint Chiefs, sir, in R&D at the Pentagon. We've talked before."

"Yes, Major."

"We have a status red."

Joshua paused for a millisecond as he felt his chest tighten.

"How can I help?"

"We've got two birds incoming, most likely nuclear," the major snapped.

"Make and model?"

"North Korean. Taepo Dong missiles. Which means they should have a guidance system compatible with your RTS-RGS protocol."

The RTS-RGS system, formally known as the Return-to-Sender-Reconfigured-Guidance System, was the antiballistic laser system Joshua and his team had been developing for the better part of ten years. It was still considered experimental and scheduled for its first real-world test next month.

"We're going to have to move that test up, Colonel," said the major, reading Joshua's mind.

Joshua leaned forward toward the helicopter pilot and yelled, "Bert, drop us back down. And call ahead to get the team assembled--ASAP!"

Joshua turned back to the SAT phone. He almost couldn't get out his next words. "What's the target?"

"New York City."

Joshua felt his heart stop. Cal should be clear of New York by now. He should be sitting on a train on his way back to college. But Abigail and Deb were in the city. Maybe they could still get to safety...

"How much time?" he choked out the words.

"Estimated detonation over Manhattan is fourteen minutes."

Joshua's mouth dried up as though he'd swallowed sand. "Please tell me we've got back-up options to interdict those missiles."

"We've scrambled our jets, but they may not make it in time. The rest of our Eastern Seaboard missile system has been handicapped since the White House tied us to the Six-Party Missile-Defense Treaty. You and your system may be our last hope. So let's just pray your little jammer can kick those two footballs back where they came from. If not, God help us all."

FIVE

Grand Central Station was warm, crowded, and noisy, a wonderful place to feel anonymous, to escape, to be alone. At least that's what Cal Jordan was thinking as he slung his backpack onto a bench and flopped down beside it. He couldn't wait to get out of the city and back to school, couldn't wait to get away from his family, particularly his father, but he especially couldn't wait to get back to Karen. The two of them had just spent a day and a half together in New York, but he missed her already. She'd left ahead of him, taking a flight out that afternoon, heading home for a cousin's wedding before returning to Liberty University. The thought of her made him smile. He'd met Karen Hester at Liberty last year when they were both freshmen, but it was a miracle they'd met at all.

Cal was painfully shy when he'd arrived at school. He didn't go to many campus events, except for hockey games. Cal loved hockey, ever since his father took him to an Avalanche game as a young boy in Colorado. He loved the speed and precision and grace, and envied the players their confidence and unchecked aggression, qualities he knew he lacked. At Liberty home games he would wear his Avalanche jersey and sit by himself high up in the stands to watch.

One night a cute girl wearing a Minnesota Wild shirt came up to Cal as he sat alone. She nudged his foot.

"You're in my seat."

Cal looked around. There wasn't anyone seated within a dozen rows of them.

She nudged him again, insisting, "You're in my seat."

He got up to move.

As he was walking away, she laughed, "Just like an Avalanche fan to roll over without a fight."

She smiled a big, beautiful warm smile. That was how he met Karen.

He probably fell in love with her that first instant, but it took him three months to admit it to himself and another three months to finally tell her how he felt. All she could do was smile and say, "What took you so long?"

He loved her unpretentious way and how she made him feel safe and confident. And of course, they both shared a faith in Christ. Beyond all that she supported his desire to be an artist. She wanted to be a performer herself, either an actress or a singer. But she said she wanted to do more with her talent than just get famous and rich.

Cal had only told his parents a little about Karen, but it had taken him all summer just to get up the courage to tell them he was changing majors. He didn't want them to think she had had anything to do with his decision. And the truth was, she hadn't. She'd just given him the confidence he needed to realize what he really wanted to do. If only his father could see him the way she did, then he'd understand, then he wouldn't be so angry and disappointed.

Cal pulled his ticket from his shirt pocket to check the train time. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen more minutes, and then he could leave all this behind. All the harsh words, the long looks, the cold silences.

Then he heard the first scream.

He looked up to see a woman across the train station. She was white as a ghost, staring at a TV monitor on the opposite platform. Everyone around her was doing the same. Cal turned to the nearest monitor. He couldn't hear the sound, but he could see on the screen a reporter in Times Square pointing up at the sky. The text below him read, "NY City in Panic, Nuclear Attack Imminent."

Cal stared at the words as if in a nightmare. They made no sense. He could feel his hands going cold and clammy. He turned to survey the crowd and realized people had started to pour into the station from every entrance--pushing, shoving, full of panic.

From what he could see on the TV monitors, New York was in pandemonium. Drivers were trying to get out of the city any way possible, careening down sidewalks, scattering screaming pedestrians, knocking over display signs, newspaper racks, and hot dog carts.

New Yorkers on foot were running for their lives past stalled cars and traffic jams. Bridges were filled with panicking people, fleeing. Riots developed at subway stops as escapees fought for seats on the next subway out.

As Cal's senses slowly came back to him, the noise in the cavernous main concourse grew unbearable. He covered his ears, but the horrible din of a thousand people trying to flee certain death still filtered through.

He looked up and saw a woman shoved to the ground by the crush of people running to reach the train tunnels. Cal was standing only a few feet away, pressed up flat against the marble walls to avoid being swept away in the human flood. She reached out to him for help, out from the tangled mob of feet that were trampling her, but Cal was frozen, unable to move. Fear gripped him like a vise, squeezing his chest and turning his stomach to knots, his breath coming in short, panicked gulps. He stared at the woman, her hand outstretched, eyes pleading. What if this was Karen? But Cal couldn't move, couldn't reach out to help her. His legs were like rubber as he found himself slipping to the floor, shaking uncontrollably.

His cell phone rang. He didn't hear it so much as he felt it vibrating in his pocket. Maybe it was Karen. He fumbled it from his jacket. The screen read "Mom calling." He tried to push the button to answer but couldn't make his finger work. The cell slipped out of his hand to the marble floor and slid away into the mass of rushing humanity. Cal looked across at the lifeless body of the woman. The mob had crushed her underfoot.

Flooded with feelings of guilt and helplessness, Cal could feel the sobs starting to well up inside his throat.

SIX

Joshua burst into the glass-lined corridor of his penthouse office and waved off the private security guards. As he dashed through the lobby, his frantic receptionist jumped to her feet, yelling something about an announcement on the radio.

"Ignore it," Joshua ordered. "It's under control."

"Abigail's been trying to reach you," she yelled back.

"Is the team in my office?" he barked.

"Yes, but--"

Just then his personal cell phone rang. He clicked the answer function on his Allfone as he headed for the executive suite.

"Josh!" Abigail shouted on the other end. "I just saw the headline on the crawler in Times Square--"

"I already heard...I'm at the office...we're doing everything we can to stop it. Where are you?"

"In the basement of a hotel just off the Square. Deb's with me. Josh, is it true?"

"Yes. But I'm counting on the Return-to-Sender, the jammer. I've got to believe we're ready for this," Joshua said, trying to sound upbeat.

The phone went quiet for a second.

"Tell me that I'll see you again," his wife said with a catch in her throat.

"Darling, we're going to stop this thing," he said as he sprinted toward his office. "Did Cal get away?"

"I think so; he didn't answer his cell."

Joshua could only hope that was because he was on a train right now speeding away to safety.

"Kiss Deb for me."

"I will," she said in a voice that was struggling for control.

"I'll see you tonight--you understand me? I promise...Abby...I love you...," Joshua assured as he burst into his office, his team already waiting.

"I love you too," she said. "So much...so much...oh, Josh, I'll pray for you that God protects...all of us..."

He hung up and glanced around the room. These were the best and brightest research and weapons-design engineers in the world. He focused past them to the floor-to-ceiling views of the tops of New York City skyscrapers looking all the way out to Ellis Island and to Liberty Island where the Statue of Liberty stood. Could this all end today? The RTS-RGS system simply had to work--for all of them there, for his wife and children, for New York, for the country, for the whole world. He snapped back to reality. His team stared, waiting for direction. He took a breath and steadied himself.

"I need an answer--concise and within the high range of probability," he began. "Can a single one of our jammers redirect not just one, but two nuclear warheads where their trajectory suggests a common target?"

After less than ten seconds of reflection, Ted, the senior engineer spoke up. "We tested those protocols. We have all the calibrations to make that happen--"

"But we've never fired a dual redirection system," Carolyn, the weapons physicist blurted out. "Not in a real-world test."

"Fine, but either our protocols are correct or they aren't...," another engineer shouted.

"And if they aren't--," a second engineer started to say.

But Joshua jumped in.

"If our calculations are wrong," he said, "then we're all in trouble, along with several million Americans. Anyone here have any suggestions to increase the likelihood of success?

Silence. Ted shook his head.

"Then I'm making the call," Joshua snapped, and he reached down to a locked desk, tapped in a code, and a titanium steel drawer opened, revealing a red-white-and-blue phone. He dialed a number on a keypad, then waited.

Three seconds later it rang.

The phone emitted a heavy metallic ring that made everyone jump. The team may have looked cool and calm, but their nerves were on the very edge.

Joshua picked up the receiver.

"This is Major General Zepak, calling on behalf of Vice Chairman Bolthauer from the Joint Chiefs. Who am I speaking to?"

"Joshua Jordan here, along with my primary systems design team..."

"What's the verdict?" the Pentagon officer snapped.

Joshua was resolute. "We have a high degree of confidence that if we follow the protocols we developed for a multiple missile attack we'll be successful, sir."

"Okay. I'll patch you through to the USS
Tiger Shark.
You folks'll run the show from there, coordinating with the ship to get that jammer target-ready and airborne in the next..." his voice paused, "seven minutes."

Then the Pentagon official added one more sobering thought.

"And I don't have to remind you, we only get one crack at this..."

In the Atlantic, a few miles off Long Island, Commander Bradley of the USS
Tiger Shark
waited in the weapons launch room with a direct line to the security phone in Joshua's office. His naval weapons officer sat at a keyboard, typing in commands. As the officer hit each keystroke he called out the verbal cue. In Joshua's office the design team listened and watched on the secure videophone, comparing the seaman's verbal cues with the system protocol displayed on a large screen on one of the walls.