Pete chewed his lower lip, sucking the salt from it as he pondered the unfolding disaster. A window displaying the Google news page refreshed, informing him that nearly three thousand stories had already been filed on the phenomenon – none of them from North America. The bright blue hyperlinks all led to European and Asian sites. One, from Agence France-Presse, reported that trading had been suspended on the London, Tokyo and Sydney stock exchanges. Just beneath it, a Novosti report from Moscow claimed that the Russian armed forces had all been called into barracks and placed on high alert. Pete adjusted his balance as the Diamantina slipped sideways down the face of another large wave. ‘You’re right,’ he concluded. ‘We’ve got to get in somewhere, fast. This feels like a big bucket of shit’s about to tip over and bury the whole world. Let’s head for Acapulco.’

‘You sure?’ asked Fifi, her usually sunny features darkened by real fear. ‘That’s close to the… thing.’

‘I know,’ said Pete. ‘But I got friends there – well, contacts, anyway. And the effect’s not moving.’

For now, he thought to himself.

The shock and awe was not long in coming. Coalition headquarters in Qatar was a focal point of communication links, neutron-star-dense, not all of them controlled by the military. Hundreds of journalists had gathered there to report on the upcoming invasion of Iraq, and many if not all of them enjoyed direct voice and data access to their own headquarters and, of course, to the wider global media. ‘The incident’, as it was now being referred to, had occurred shortly before a scheduled press briefing in the main media room, giving the assembled journalists just long enough to work up a fine head of craziness, and to warn their colleagues who might have been disinclined to attend the tightly scripted and mostly useless briefing that for once ‘the follies’ might be worth a look. Bret Melton couldn’t believe the turnout. Normally this room was only half full, but today every seat was taken, and in the back half even the central aisles were packed. He doubted it had anything to do with the scheduled appearance of the British and Australian task force commanders, who were due to give their first joint conference with General Franks.

Indeed, neither Franks nor the junior Coalition partners were anywhere to be seen as a USAF colonel took the podium. Melton, a former Ranger, was a nine-year veteran of the Army Times foreign desk and knew most of the US military’s Qatar-based flak handlers by their first names. He had never seen this air force bird before. He keyed on his dictaphone as soon as the officer appeared, ensuring that the first twenty seconds of his recording were taken up with the jabbering crescendo of 200-plus colleagues all shouting individual questions at the front of the room. He had no trouble resisting the urge to join in the raucous assault on the dignity of the briefer – what would be the point? Melton waited for the chaos to die down.

The colonel did nothing to calm the room. He merely placed a sheaf of papers on the podium and stood at ease, examining the unruly mob with cool detachment. Nearly a minute and a half after he had first entered the room, the reporters slowly, gradually, quietened down and resumed their seats like shamefaced school children. As if to make the point about who precisely was in charge, the colonel’s eyes traversed his audience with a cold, mechanical detachment.

Melton readied his pen to take notes. His Sony recorder was working perfectly but that was exactly when you couldn’t trust the damn things.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Colonel Yost, and I will be taking your briefing tonight in place of generals Franks and Wall and Brigadier McNairn. They have been indisposed by developments but will make themselves available for questioning as soon as possible.’

An Italian TV producer sitting directly in front of Melton leapt to his feet and called out, ‘When?’

Yost fixed him with a killing stare and waited a full three seconds before answering. ‘As. Soon. As. Possible.’

A further glare delivered as a broadside to most of the room cut off any more interruptions.

‘As you know, communications links to North America have been severed – not just from CENTCOM, but more generally, across both the civilian and military spectrum,’ said Yost. ‘Answering speculation as to why, how and by whom is not my responsibility today. It may be yours, but you won’t get your answers here. CENTCOM is endeavouring to re-establish contact as quickly as possible. We have already confirmed links with the Pacific, European and – I emphasise – with some elements of the Northern Command. For those of you who do not know, NORTHCOM is the unified military command responsible for operations in the US, Mexico, Canada and the northern Caribbean.’

Melton didn’t bother to jot down the explanation. He was familiar with all the US commands, having worked in each of them at some time, but he did note that Yost didn’t claim to be in contact with NORTHCOM proper, just ‘elements’ of it. That could mean a big ass-kicking set-up like Fort Lewis, outside of Seattle, or it might mean he’d phoned a guard post somewhere on the outskirts of Anchorage or Guantanamo.

‘Have you seen the photos, Colonel? The French satellite photos of your cities? Can you tell us what has happened to them?’

Melton recognised the voice of Sayad al Mirsaad, the Al Jazeera correspondent who was forever in danger of being thrown off the base. Yost levelled the same robotic stare at him as he’d used to silence the Italian provocateur, but Melton knew his Jordanian colleague wouldn’t be so easily cowed. Mirsaad remained on his feet, hands on hips, almost inviting him to reach over and take a swing.

‘They are gone, Colonel. It is all gone. An act of God, no less. How could it be otherwise?’

Yost jumped in before a flood tide of voices could drown him out. ‘It could very easily be anything but, Mr Mirsaad. You are not there. You haven’t seen anything for yourself. All you know is that you can’t get a phone call through, and somebody is selling very expensive pictures of what looks to me like computer-generated video-game imagery. If I were you I’d go read your H.G. Wells before I pushed the panic button, sir.’

Melton smirked quietly as he filled his notepad with shorthand. He had to score that one to Yost, although the classical sci-fi reference seemed lost on the Jordanian as it was on most of the other foreign journalists in the room. Or at least those from non-English-speaking countries. For himself, he didn’t mind a bit of trashy reading when he was stretched out in business class, thirty thousand feet up. He even admired Iain M. Banks’s high-tone Culture novels as an unlikely blend of literature and SF. But he lived and worked in the real world, just like the men and women he wrote about, and while the Army Times correspondent couldn’t possibly imagine what sort of technical clusterfuck or psy-war hoax they were dealing with, he had no doubt that the explanation was more prosaic than alien space bats or the hand of God.