Nuclear Winter Series | Book 2 | Nuclear Winter Armageddon Read online

  His words were muted by the wails of despair and agony coming from Hank. He gripped the bar with both hands and dropped his head to the shiny, lacquered teak wood that was covered in bubbles of tears.

  “Nooo! No! No! Nooo! God, no! Not both of my children. You can’t do this to us!”

  Mike and Phoebe rushed to his side. Everyone was sobbing as they tried to comfort one another.

  Hank fell to his knees and collapsed into a fetal position between two barstools. He began to shake and gasp for air as he cried uncontrollably. He repeated the same words over and over again. He begged and pleaded through his voice and tears.

  “No. No. No.”

  CNN continued to repeat the information, speculating now as to the number of dead and the cost of the destruction. It was Sonny Free, the Albrights’ longtime caretaker of Driftwood Key and family friend, who turned down the volume. Hearing the news multiple times was like being bludgeoned with the same sledgehammer. It was already painful. There was no need to continue inflicting the misery.

  Mike and Sonny helped Hank sit upright. Phoebe and Jessica knelt down in front of him. Sometimes, a man suffering an excruciating loss can only be comforted by his mom, or the closest thing to her.

  Sonny handed his wife, Phoebe, a bottle of water and a clean bar towel. Hank was suddenly cold and sweaty. His eyes, drenched with tears, darted around the room as his mind tried to process the immense sadness he was feeling. Mike’s wife, Jessica, a trained paramedic, noticed the likely symptoms of shock. As Phoebe lovingly patted his forehead and neck, Jessica whispered in his ear and comforted him with a familiar voice.

  After a couple of minutes, Hank had recovered enough to recognize where he was and what was happening around him. His eyes sought out his younger brother. Growing up, he’d always been the one to take care of Mike. As Mike matured to become a homicide detective, Hank found himself drawing strength from the younger man.

  There was a time after Hank’s wife passed when he was having difficulty coping. Mike was more than his rock. He was a pillar of granite to lean on. In this moment, he sought Mike out again.

  Hank spoke softly and slowly, his words separated by sniffles. “Mike, this can’t be happening.”

  His brother reached out his right hand, and Hank grasped it, the two men locking them together to become one. Mike pulled Hank to his feet. He took a deep breath and looked his brother in the eye. Then Mike gently patted his brother on the chest.

  “What does your heart say, Hank?”

  Hank couldn’t respond as the tears flowed again. Mike leaned down and tilted his head so he was eye to eye with his brother. He gently placed his hand on Hank’s cheek.

  “Listen to me. Forget what you saw on TV. What does your heart say? Does your heart tell you that they’re gone? Does it?”

  Tears flowed out of Hank’s eyes as he locked them in a stare with Mike’s. He began to blink rapidly. He shook his head side to side and whispered, “No.”

  Mike allowed a slight smile as he placed his right hand over Hank’s heart again. He, too, was crying, and he didn’t try to stifle his emotions. He continued. “Hank, they’re not gone. God would not take them from us. They’re not gone. I’m as sure of that as I am anything else.”

  Hank laughed nervously, wiping his tears off his face. “You’re right. I’m such an idiot. We’re talking about Peter and Lacey here.”

  Now Mike and the others joined in laughing as they allowed their tears to flow at the same time. It was spontaneous. Natural. From the heart.

  “Nine lives,” muttered Phoebe as she moved in to hug Hank.

  “Well, eight for Peter,” said Jimmy Free with a chuckle. He and Peter were like brothers, having grown up together on Driftwood Key, although Jimmy was several years younger. “Remember the time I pulled him up from diving? We had to buddy-breathe the last sixty feet because he ran out of oxygen.”

  “What? When was that?” Hank was genuinely confused. “I never heard about this.”

  “Oh, shoot. I thought he told you.”

  “No, and besides, it’s seven now. He used one or two up in Abu Dhabi.”

  Mike started laughing. Now the tears had dissipated, and everyone was coping through their loving recollections of the lives of their family.

  “Listen. If Peter can get himself out of that pickle with car bombs and crazed terrorists firing automatic weapons everywhere, he can dodge a freakin’ nuclear bomb.”

  This brought a roar of laughter from the group. Hank was recovering from his emotional devastation.

  “Don’t forget, Mr. Hank,” began Sonny. “Lacey is a survivalist. You could throw her in the woods with nothing but the clothes on her back and she’d come out of there just fine. Tucker has that survival mentality, too.”

  “And Owen?” asked Jessica.

  Hank responded to that one. “My son-in-law fights his battles against the tech giants. He’ll be fine.”

  Mike patted Hank on the outside of his shoulders with both hands. Then the two men hugged.

  “See, now tell me. What does your heart say to you?”

  Hank was now beaming with a smile that evaporated the tears. “It tells me we’d better get the guest rooms ready. I don’t know when they’ll get here. But I know they will.”

  Chapter Six

  Friday, October 25

  Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center

  Northern Virginia

  “We didn’t start this shit!” President Carter Helton shouted as he wandered through the operations center deep in the underground bunker at Mount Weather located in Northern Virginia. He was sweating profusely. He’d lost all sense of decorum expected of presidents. His jacket had been slung in a chair, his tie was removed, and his sweat-soaked shirt was only partially tucked.

  The president was accurate in his statement that the United States did not fire the first shot that led to nuclear Armageddon. It was the Iranian government that opened up the floodgates by sending nuclear ballistic missiles into Tel Aviv, Israel. Naturally, the Israelis returned the favor, and the result was the near total destruction of Tehran.

  After that, the house of cards known as MAD, the deterrent based upon mutually assured destruction, fell apart.

  However, it was not necessarily the launching of the nuclear missiles that ultimately drew the U.S. into its own fight for survival. Many argued at the time of the Iranian-Israeli exchange that the president should defend America’s staunchest ally. President Helton remained out of the fight, allowing Israel to fend for themselves.

  This was seen as a sign of weakness by many world leaders and even within the ranks of the U.S. military. Whispers persisted that the president lacked confidence in America’s ability to fight a war overseas. In their minds, the president’s mettle had been tested, and he’d failed.

  Then the Islamabad government upped the ante by retaliating against India for air strikes on military sites deep within Pakistan. Their response was a steady barrage of ballistic missiles detonating nuclear warheads in heavily populated India. Once again, India fought back, and as the regional nuclear war broke out, the U.S. remained on the sidelines.

  As the Helton administration was now perceived as weak by the world’s bad actors, the Kim regime took the events as an opportunity to flex the Hermit Kingdom’s muscles on the Korean Peninsula. They amassed troops in the demilitarized zone with South Korea. They exercised their first-strike capabilities against Seoul and military targets as a precursor to invasion. Yet that was not enough for the brutal dictator of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which was anything but democratic.

  Pyongyang immediately declared war on Japan and launched nuclear missiles toward Tokyo. America’s Aegis missile defense system posted in the region took out all but one of the ICBMs as they sailed over the Sea of Japan.

  At this point, the North Koreans went all in. They launched their remaining fixed ICBMs toward high-value targets within the United States. America’s ground-based interceptors, known as GBI
s, performed as well as could be expected, but to do so, it had to exhaust multiple defensive missiles per ICBM.

  The North Koreans’ barrage overwhelmed the U.S. defenses, and their Chinese-supplied, five-hundred-kiloton warheads wreaked havoc in America. The Kim regime focused on large population centers as well as government and technology centers. On the west coast, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle took direct hits. In the Eastern United States, New York and Washington, DC, were decimated.

  Before North Korea’s remaining ICBMs could strike America’s own nuclear silos in the Northern Rockies, the president retaliated, resulting in the near total destruction of North Korea’s cities and military installations.

  The nuclear exchange was over, but the aftermath of Armageddon was just beginning.

  Finally, President Helton stopped pacing. He was handed a dry towel to dab the sweat off his face. His chief of staff, Harrison Chandler, patted him on the back and gave him a reassuring smile. The nukes had stopped flying, and it was time to get to work.

  “Let’s start with a damage assessment,” said Chandler, allowing his boss to regain his composure.

  The director of National Intelligence, who’d remained with the president throughout, took the lead on the intelligence briefing that was uncharacteristically held in the open forum within Mount Weather’s operations center. The president didn’t want to leave, as he was still skeptical of China’s promise to stand down, and he wanted to be present if they retaliated against the U.S. on North Korea’s behalf.

  “Sir, it would be impossible to discuss casualties at this point.” He began the grim assessment in a sullen tone of voice. “Comms are down in every region that received a direct hit. Our appraisal of the situation is based primarily on satellite imagery.”

  “Understood,” said the president with a nod to his DNI to continue.

  “As we’ve learned, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle were all likely struck with a one-half-megaton warhead based upon our calculations of the crater’s size in each location.”

  “How big?”

  “Five hundred kilotons, sir.”

  “No. I meant how big was the crater?”

  “My apologies, sir. Other than San Francisco, they were similar in size. Roughly two hundred to three hundred feet deep with a diameter in excess of a thousand feet.”

  “San Francisco was different?” President Helton asked.

  “Yes, sir. Ground zero for that warhead was at the lower end of San Francisco Bay near Santa Clara. It struck just at the water’s edge, destroying much of Silicon Valley and sending a tsunami-like wave away from the blast site toward San Francisco, Alameda, and Oakland. The coastal areas of San Francisco Bay are currently covered with thirty feet of water.”

  “Jesus,” the president mumbled to himself. His forehead instantly became covered with sweat again, and he mopped his brow with the towel he clutched in his left hand. “Denver?”

  “Denver’s situation is both a blessing and a curse, sir.”

  “None of this is a blessing, Mr. Director,” the president interjected in an angry tone.

  “My apologies, sir. That was out of line and a poor choice of words.” The director shuffled his feet and looked down before continuing. “Sir, Denver avoided a direct hit like the three westernmost cities. That was what I was referring to. There have been no reports of loss of life as a result of the detonation.”

  President Helton took a deep breath and exhaled. He wiped his forehead again and patted his DNI on the upper arm. “I’m sorry, too. That part is a blessing. Please explain.”

  “Yes, sir. One of our ground-based intercepts struck the incoming nuclear missile approximately seven miles northwest of Boulder. The likely target for that ICBM was Cheyenne Mountain. When the two missiles collided, the nuclear warhead detonated and sent out an electromagnetic pulse in all directions.”

  “How far?” asked the president.

  “Unknown at this time. However, if the weapon was similar in payload to the other warheads that struck the west coast, based upon the height of the collision at an altitude close to thirty miles above the planet’s surface, we can expect a radius of four to five hundred miles from Denver.”

  Chief of Staff Chandler stepped toward one of the aides and pointed toward a screen. “Can you give us a graphic illustrating a five-hundred-mile radius of Denver?”

  “Yes, sir. Just a moment.”

  Less than half a minute later, a map of the United States appeared with two concentric circles appearing around Denver as their center point. Within the largest ring, the cities of Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, and Kansas City were either included or close.

  The director of National Intelligence continued. “Based on the science and our computer models, electronics in the area extending five hundred miles from Denver would no longer be operable. Again, this is preliminary based upon our best assessment of all relevant factors.”

  The president ran his hand down the front of his face and covered his mouth. He took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled into his hand, causing his cheeks to puff out.

  The DNI continued. “Sir, the fiery debris from the collision rained down upon the Rockies just west of Denver. With the dry conditions, wildfires have broken out along the eastern slope of the mountains from Cheyenne Mountain north toward Fort Collins and south toward Pueblo.”

  “What about in the east?” asked Chandler.

  The president had to steady his nerves to get an assessment of New York City and the nation’s capital. Minutes later, his worst fears had materialized. Many millions were dead. Most of Washington, DC, had been obliterated, as was New York City. And fires from the superheated blast were spreading outward, devouring everything in their path.

  Chapter Seven

  Friday, October 25

  Fair Oaks Mall

  Fairfax, Virginia

  On the upper level of the mall immediately adjacent to Dick’s Sporting Goods was an empty space being remodeled for a jewelry store. The interior was still under construction, but the glass wall units and display cases had already been installed. The exposed drop ceiling was partially in place, and the HVAC ductwork was in the process of being installed.

  Peter needed a space that was completely unattractive to the looters or any refugees. An unfinished space with nothing to steal in it was a plus. One that was under construction with nothing to provide comfort to the refugees was a huge bonus.

  First, he set about making it appear even less desirable. He broke out some of the glass windows at the front of the store. Then he gathered up some building materials that were ideal for what he had in mind to limit his exposure to any radioactive fallout that found its way into the mall through the breached entryways.

  All of the glass cases and displays were covered in heavy-duty plastic sheeting. The six-millimeter-thick plastic was attached with duct tape, a case of which was found behind one of the counters. After he gathered up all of the plastic and duct tape, he secured it in the storeroom. Then he literally trashed the place.

  He broke out most of the glass cases. He retrieved garbage from the large receptacles just outside the storefront and emptied the bags onto the floor. He took a neatly stacked pile of ceiling tiles and broke them in half before throwing them around the store’s interior as well as outside the entrance.

  Anyone with an idle curiosity about what was inside the vacated retail space would immediately move on to more lucrative options. For Peter, it was perfect.

  Once the space was adequately defaced, he set about covering the back wall with plastic to seal it off. Using the ladders left behind by the workers and the duct tape, he wallpapered the drywall with the sheets of plastic, sealing it up as airtight as possible. To enter the storeroom, he simply peeled back one corner of the sheeting near the single entry door and then resealed it from the other side.

  He was able to lock the door to deter anyone from entering, and he used a flat-head screwdriver to jimmy open the lock when
he needed access. It wasn’t a perfect place to hide out, but it was better than the other alternatives in the mall. It gave him a place of solace where the chaos within the mall was only a dull roar.

  Until dawn, he managed a fitful sleep. His mind recalled the events as they unfolded. He fell asleep only to relive the nightmare again, except this time far more vividly, as if he were at ground zero himself.

  He awoke with a start at the sound of voices inside the retail space where he’d been hiding.

  “What’s back there?” a young man asked loudly. A flashlight illuminated the plastic sheeting, allowing a slight glow to appear through the crack beneath the locked door.

  “Who gives a shit, man? Look at this place. If there was anything here, it’s gone now.”

  The other man was persistent. The light swept across the door frame and then away. “Look at that plastic. It seems somebody put it up there.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. Some construction worker did it. I’m leaving.”

  Good idea, thought Peter as he pulled his handgun out of the sling pack. He sat up. Using his feet, he pushed himself away from the door toward the other end of the storeroom.

  Peter sat in the dark with the gun pointed toward the door. He nervously held it with both hands. He knew how to kill. He’d done it in Abu Dhabi. But that was different. It was reactive. In the heat of the moment. A kill or be killed situation. Was he prepared to shoot a kid with a flashlight simply because he was scared of what the kid might do?

  The plastic sheeting was rustling. One of the young men was slapping it with the palm of his hand. Then he heard words that made him sigh in relief.

  “Screw it. I’m comin’.”

  Peter closed his eyes and exhaled. He didn’t need the aggravation of shooting someone armed with a flashlight and a poor decision to indulge their curiosity. After a couple of minutes during which time several deep breaths led to calmed nerves, Peter opened the door and peeked into the store. Sunlight flooded the mall through the skylights. It was time to gather up a few things.