Bai shrugged. “It’s a kilometer straight down. No lights. It just takes a cable a millimeter across. It’ll be shielded if it’s in the main tunnel, hidden and protected. There’s a second tunnel for the counterweights as well. For all we know it’s not even in that one – they had time to lase new tunnels, just millimeters wide.” Bai turned and gestured to the bodies they’d stepped over. “These people knew.”

Kade shook his head. Madness.

“We go to her,” he said, studying the massive elevator doors. “We go down the rabbit hole.”

119
DEFCON

Monday 2041.01.20

Colonel Cheung Baili watched as the time ticked away. Nearly midnight.

The deadline was coming fast. Around him his officers sat at their posts, hunched over consoles, ready to do their duty, ready to do what they’d trained to do.

Cheung strode up behind one. “Any update from command?” he asked his comms officer, from over the young man’s shoulder.

The Lieutenant shook his head. “No, sir.”

They’d been relaying messages over analog radio via high-flying aircraft. It was a slow, horrid game of telephone. But it worked.

“Try them again,” Cheung said. “Have them reconfirm our most current orders.”

“Yes, sir,” his comms officer replied.

He did not want to launch this missile. He didn’t want that at all.

Carolyn Pryce watched the giant screens mounted on the walls of the vast Pentagon Situation Room, above the heads of the scores of military and intelligence officers at their consoles.

Maps showed the locations of Chinese military installations, highlighted anti-ship missile emplacements down the coast in red. The JAVELIN birds in orbit were primed, armed, ready to fire.

Jesus.

10.48am. Almost midnight in China. And things were going crazy there. Uploaded footage showed moving tanks and machine gun fire at the site of at least one protest. Fire bombs were going off. There were unconfirmed rumors of an ousted Standing Committee Member making a stand, blurry videos of Chinese soldiers fighting each other.

“It looks like a damn revolution,” Admiral Stanley McWilliams said next to her.

Pryce nodded. She had to agree with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. China looked like it was headed for the brink.

“Revolution or no,” Secretary of Defense Bernard Stevens said. “If they launch on our ships, we take those launchers out.”

“We’ve got reports of more violence in Moscow,” the CIA liaison said next to her. “Cairo. Nairobi. Caracas.” He paused, shaking his head. “Protests are heating up everywhere. It’s spreading. Via Nexus.”

Nexus. Pryce gritted her teeth. It was a vector for the violence, letting people spread their rage. Maybe Stockton was right. Maybe she was wrong to downplay the threat.

She looked over at two other screens, showing DC.

One showed the march, moving down 16th Street. Huge. Angry. Not yet violent. But would it go that way?