Authors: Reed Sprague
“Mr. Albert, I am ordering you to leave the White House grounds at once,” the senior agent responded.
“Shoot me,” Albert replied, as he walked deliberately past the agents and toward the door to the White House.
President Barnes was just inside the entrance to the White House and heard the exchange between the Secret Service agents and Albert. “Allow him to come in,” the president said. “I’ve got enough problems on my hands already. I don’t need to have a dead deputy chief of the USFIA to deal with on top of everything else that’s going wrong.”
President Barnes’ inner office door was not that far inside the north White House entrance door. Albert stormed into the president’s office, just behind the president, and immediately demanded to know where the president got the information he used to justify the attack on the Pakistanis. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want, Albert!” President Barnes screamed, after being challenged by Albert to tell him of his reasoning for the attack. “If you don’t like it, I’ll accept your resignation right this moment!”
“Mr. President, please, please, this is a screw up of epic proportions. I can’t imagine what you or the others were thinking. Please tell me who told you whatever it is that you were told that caused you to invade Pakistan.”
“If you had been doing your job protecting those nuclear bombs from the Pakistani Resistance Force, this would not have happened,” Barnes shouted.
“Mr. President, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I honestly don’t. If the USFIA had any nuclear bombs under our authority, we would have registered them with you. You know that.”
“No way, Albert. We know. We know that the other bomb is missing. We know that you guys screwed it all up. Don’t worry, though, Downing and Hernandez will find the damn thing before it can go off. That’s something you obviously can’t and couldn’t do.”
“I think I know what happened. Was it Downing and Hernandez from the FBI who came to you?” Albert asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sure Downing’s clean, but Hernandez is always scraping the bottom of the pit. That guy’s bad news. Always has been. Who else, sir?”
“Ambassador Yamamoto.”
“That’s not good. We’ve been investigating him. We suspect that he was contacted by Peterson to go to work for him, to help Peterson in his quest of delusion to become royal highness of the world. Peterson’s thugs were seen stalking Yamamoto’s great grandchildren in Tokyo. Yamamoto might have an ax to grind with the U.S.”
“How’s that?”
“His father was killed in Hiroshima, by Little Boy. Fat Man got his father’s father a few days later.”
“O, my God. You are serious, aren’t you,” the president said as it became clear to him that he had made a monumental mistake by invading Pakistan and cutting Albert out of the decision to do so.
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid I am serious,” Albert said.
“And, one more thing, Mr. President.”
“What?”
“We believe that we know where the second bomb is. I had planned to send my best agents over to get it.”
“We’re doomed,” the president said. “We are in huge trouble. Get that bomb. Make sure it doesn’t go off. I can’t do anything about the invasion of Pakistan at this point, but we have got to make certain that bomb does not go off. I am ordering you to arrest Hernandez and Yamamoto immediately.”
“That will not be easy, Mr. President,” Albert replied.
“Why?”
“They’re gone. They’ve disappeared. My guess is that Peterson realized early on that this whole thing would unravel and that we would come after Hernandez and Yamamoto, possibly connecting them to him. He’s probably hiding them.”
In the process of wiping out the Pakistani Resistance Force, the U.S. Air Force also destroyed an entire Pakistani village. Thousands of innocent Pakistani citizens died in the attack. The suspected members of the Resistance Force were not even in the village at the time of the attack. They had never been to the village. They were seventy–five miles to the south, far away from any town or village, hiding essentially in the open—not in homes, a mountain cave or government buildings.
The Pakistani people were outraged. Even if the village had not been destroyed, they would have been outraged by the attack on the Resistance Force. The world was about to learn of the reasons for the attack on Pakistan, none of which would be acceptable justification, and the entire world would undoubtedly join the Pakistani people in their outrage.
The people of Pakistan demanded that their government do something to retaliate against the United States. Pakistani options were limited, but open chaos and outright anarchy were the sure results if the Pakistani government appeared weak against U.S. aggression. The Pakistani government did something that no one dreamed they would do. They launched a small nuclear missile, purportedly aimed at a U.S. Naval fleet in the Arabian Sea. The goal was to appear to be tough on the Americans. The bomb was actually aimed at the open waters, and the Pakistanis intended for it to sink harmlessly to the bottom of the sea without causing any damage.
The bomb was terribly off course. It landed on the island city of Kavaratti, India. The Indian government’s policy, to be strictly followed, was to retaliate with full nuclear force to any like attack from its hated neighbor, Pakistan.
Indian nuclear bombs rained down on Pakistan. Every Pakistani military base and nuclear facility was destroyed within eight minutes of the accidental bombing of Kavaratti. Confusion as to exactly what had happened caused the Pakistanis to flinch, just for a moment or two, and that delay gave the decisive Indians the few precious moments needed to attack and destroy.
Before the entire country of Pakistan would be destroyed, India inexplicably stopped the bombing. The Indians were satisfied that they had destroyed the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Then their human compassion for the general welfare of the Pakistani masses won out over their need for blind vengeance.
The war between Pakistan and India became known as the Ten Minute Nuclear War, and it killed more than two million people. Millions more were tortured with searing pain. But the war ended before it could become an all–out worldwide nuclear holocaust.
Fears of intense nuclear bombing between the nuclear armed nations of the earth gave way in a few short minutes to the sanity that there would be no winner if the madness escalated.
But things could not remain the same. The world had to come together now, or so Peterson proposed. Under the authority of the United Nations, and the leadership of Tyler Peterson, there would be meetings of all the world’s superpowers and things would be very different in the future. Millions had died, vaporized in seconds, and there were no punks or bullies who could be hunted down. Good guy/bad guy, liberal/conservative discussions were fruitless and even irrelevant.
Much of the never–ending, mind numbing rhetoric that had been so important for so many decades simply faded and was forgotten. It was all so simple now: The good could no longer be counted on to protect the innocent from the bad. Hunting down the bad guys and destroying them would not solve the problem.
The Ten Minute Nuclear War was proof of only one thing: Worldwide nuclear power must be equally shared from that day on, with no tolerance whatsoever for deviation from a yet–to–be–decided norm. There would be one acceptable standard for each major area of human need and existence.
Leaders from the United States, China, Russia and the European Union all met at a secret location in Beijing. The meeting was tense, argumentative and even explosive. All leaders came to the meeting with general agreement, though, that the way things had worked in the world had to change drastically, and that change had to happen forthwith.
In fact, the leaders had already outlined the plan. It was completed long before the Ten Minute Nuclear War. World leaders had come together many times before in secret to plan for various nuclear or otherwise catastrophic scenarios. Peterson had led several of those meetings, and he would lead this one. The plan that always made it to the top was the one that called for a simple idea, but one that would be effective nonetheless.
There would be a sharing of the triggers that are the means to launch any nuclear bomb in the world. A nuclear bomb could not be launched unless eighty percent of those with various trigger capabilities agreed. Each would then have to do precisely as his procedures called for, in the exact order required, before a nuclear bomb could be launched. Each continent and major people group, based on assigned religious beliefs for major geographic regions, would participate. Any country refusing to take part would be given the option to reconsider, and, if they refused, all other countries would launch a full–scale non–nuclear military attack against them, destroying their governmental system and replacing it. The world could take no more chances.
Exceptions or even compromises to full and absolute participation could not be tolerated. The potential for human suffering had been witnessed first hand during the Ten Minute Nuclear War. Never again would the world witness the massacre of a large number of people for such an inexcusable series of blunders that led to the Ten Minute Nuclear War, or for any other reason.
At first, Great Britain asked if it could refuse to cooperate fully. The Brits would share, they proposed, but only if they were allowed to retain trigger procedures that allowed for a team of British leaders to launch under certain well defined conditions. Their proposal was denied.
Then the United States tried to compromise. The U.S. would cooperate, except that they, as the Western Hemisphere’s only protection from attack, would retain three sites from which they could launch nuclear weapons, Atlanta on the east coast, Anchorage and Honolulu to the west. The request was denied without debate or discussion.
“You’re out of line! You will not propose exceptions just because you are from the United States. And you will not argue, because we are not allowed to argue. Our procedures and agreements are set. That’s the way it is. If we’re found to be fighting, or even disagreeing, it will be interpreted by the people as a sign that our authority can be questioned. We can’t and won’t tolerate that. All people groups are represented, all religions are represented, and all power is shared. We all have a piece of the trigger and the launch capability is jointly held. Authority and power will be shared,” Vladamir Chomsky, the Russian representative said with absolute clarity in response to the U.S. proposal. Peterson agreed.
In the end, there was no compromise. There would be the establishment of a Council of Worldwide Nuclear Authority, which would control the triggers of all nuclear weapons in the entire world. The CWWNA would be under the full authority and control of the WWCA, and its president, Tyler Peterson.
Power would not be shared based upon the present economic or military might of any particular country, but would be shared based on presumed religious identification and known geographic identities. Since wars were determined to happen because of geographic or religious disputes, the power to destroy the world, or to protect the world from destruction, would be shared by the major religious groups and the continents.
The Council would be composed of eleven representatives: Peterson, 1; Christianity, Roman Catholicism, 1; Christianity, Anglicanism (representative of all non–Roman Catholic Christianity), 1; Islam, Shiite, 1; Islam, Sunni and all other Islam, 1; Atheist, Pagan, 1; Atheist, all other, 1; Buddist, 1; Hindu, 1; Chinese Traditional, 1; representative of all other major world religions combined, 1. Judaism would have no representation, and would receive no recognition as a religion.
With the exception of the arctic regions, each continent was represented with no less than one vote on the Council, and Peterson also had a representative continental vote: Peterson, 1; Africa, 2; Asia, 2; Australia, 1; Europe, 2; North America, 2; South America, 1.
Peterson had veto powers for votes that received seventy–five percent or less of the eleven total votes. Votes of nine to two, ten to one or eleven to zero could not be vetoed. All those with the right to vote were required to vote.
Details of the Council’s authority included broad powers in many other areas. It quickly became apparent that, in order to maintain worldwide order, the Council must set standards for all of the following: academics (to include the arts and music), religion, commerce, culture, morality, military (already under its obvious authority over nuclear weapons), ethics, law, environment, tolerance.
Within three weeks of the Ten Minute Nuclear War, the Council held its first of what became known as its Three–day Meetings. The meetings were to last three days, and each was held twice monthly beginning on the first and third Monday of each month. Procedures were straight–forward. Debate was not needed. Arguing was not allowed. Unanimity was expected. Conformity was the order of the day. Proposed nuclear trigger procedures were to be set in place at this week’s meeting.
The Frenchman representing Europe was confused and began to object to a proposal that would possibly have proved detrimental to France.
“I will remind you that you do not represent France, sir, you represent Europe. Old habits die hard, but you would do well to understand the procedures. After all, you helped write them and you agreed to them,” one of the North American representatives, Dr. James T. Kelly, reminded him.
Each member of this Council was to know precisely how to perform each of the detailed steps necessary to activate his or her portion of the triggering required, along with the others, to launch nuclear weapons. This information — codes to be entered onto a single–purpose web site — was to be contained in the memory of the individual’s brain and no where else. There was to be no written, photographic, digital, audio, visual record of the details—nothing outside of the brain of the individual holding the code.
The codes varied in format. None was less than twenty–seven standard keyboard characters, all case–sensitive. A group of scientists and computer experts knew of the format requirements and limitations. Only the person authorized to activate the trigger he was responsible for would know the code. A code was good for exactly one year. The first North American trigger code was:
1+7YpGG527$//|\”WWNB#uvqHq9I3Eii427UWeE.