‘What’s happening in Beijing?’ asked General Franks.

Ritchie appeared to direct his answer to a spot just over Musso’s shoulder as he addressed the image of Franks on a screen thousands of miles away. ‘The army is pouring onto the streets in every major provincial capital, General. Martial law has been declared but none of the PLA’s force-projection assets have been mobilised. Nonetheless, our own counter-strike forces are at Def-con 2, just in case.’

Ice water pooled in Musso’s guts. Ritchie had ordered his nuclear submarines to stand ready should the need arise to reduce the communist giant to a vast crematorium. It raised an immediate question: who would authorise any such strike? Again, Ritchie seemed to be one step ahead of him.

‘I’m afraid, before we proceed any further,’ he said, ‘we need to discuss where the executive authority now lies.’

‘There’s no designated survivor?’ asked Tommy Franks.

Ritchie shook his head.

The further into this they got, the bleaker it grew, thought Musso. The ‘designated survivor’ was a Cabinet member nominated to remain apart from the other – was it sixteen or seventeen? – people in the presidential line of succession, a civilian analogue of the chain of command. The system only really operated when the executive was gathered in one place, such as during a State of the Union address, but now wasn’t the time to play semantics. If they couldn’t legitimately find somebody to step into the office of President, then any military actions they took would have no legal basis.

‘Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Labor, is in Geneva,’ said Ritchie, ‘at a UN conference. But she is specifically barred from the line of succession because she’s not a natural-born citizen. As best we can tell, there is nobody from the line… available.’

‘You mean “alive”,’ said Musso, unable to accept the euphemism any longer. ‘There is nobody else alive. In the line of succession. Back home. Anywhere within the affected area. You’ll excuse me for speaking out of turn, but I think we need to start responding to this on the basis of a worst-case scenario. It’s permanent. We cannot change it. They are not coming back and if we screw up, a lot more people are going to die.’

Silence greeted him, and Musso immediately regretted his lack of tact. There was a reason why he was never going to ascend to the rarefied heights of a theatre command, the same reason he’d been slated for forced retirement in the next twelve months. Finally, General Jones broke the moment, speaking from Brussels.

‘Well said, Tusk. The world’s been knocked flat on its ass wondering what hit it. But that’s going to change within a day or two. And all hell is going to cut loose. You can bet on it.’

‘Gentlemen, if I might?’

The testosterone had been ramping up very quickly. The intrusion of a softer, female voice seemed to calm things a little. Lieutenant Colonel Pileggi smiled out of the monitor at Musso, at all of them.

‘We all took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. No matter what catastrophe has overtaken us, that oath and the Constitution still stand. Millions of American citizens are still with us. Some of them back home, in the unaffected Northwest. Most of them scattered around the world. I don’t know the exact figures but there must be, what, four or five million Americans overseas on any given day? There are embassies, consulates, military bases and personnel – the sinews of government, if you will. But it is a government of the people. Not of us. If we are to act, it must be as servants of the American people, no matter how few or far flung they may be.’

Pileggi spoke with controlled passion. Nobody spoke at all until Tommy Franks’s thick Oklahoma drawl poured out of the speakers.

‘Granted, Colonel, we can’t just pick a President out of a hat. But we need to act, and damn quick. I’ve got close on a quarter-million men and women out here in the desert waiting on orders to go. Saddam has even more waiting to receive us, and a lockerful of dirty weapons ready to fire off. I got millions of potential enemy combatants all around me – Israel sitting on top of her nukes, and that asshole bin Laden spooking around in the back of it all. Pretty soon I’m gonna have to shit or get off the pot, and either way now it’s gonna make a helluva goddamn mess. You are right. It ain’t my decision to make. But somebody has to make it, and I don’t see anybody we can turn to.’

Pileggi nodded. ‘In the end, we have to turn to our citizens,’ she said. ‘But given the extreme nature of the immediate crisis, I suggest we return to first principles. We are a representative democracy. I suggest we find the senior surviving elected representative. If we can’t lay our hands on anyone from the federal level, then we go to state, to the Governor of Alaska, or Hawaii, or Washington State. We frogmarch them into office if necessary, for a strictly limited period, pending an election of a new Congress and executive.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ agreed Franks.

‘Consider it done,’ said Ritchie.

Musso watched him drop his hand to make a few notes.

‘If and when we do find someone to assume executive responsibility,’ the admiral continued, ‘we will need to be ready to do whatever is needed of us. General Musso, you’re the closest out of us to the phenomenon. It might be time to tell us what you know.’

What I know? he thought. What I know is that we’ve been fucked three ways from Sunday. When he spoke, however, it was in the same brusque style as his peers.

‘The edge of the effect, the event horizon, manifested itself as an observable atmospheric phenomenon, seventy kilometres north of my position at Guantanamo,’ he began.

‘He’s… Barb. The Air… Guard picked him… ago… and later… for now…’

‘Barney? You’re breaking up. I can’t hear more than two words in five. Did you say Kip was fine? Is he okay?’

The phone beeped in her ear, the connection lost.

Barbara Kipper slammed the handset down in its cradle. It had taken her nearly an hour, trawling around in hellacious traffic, to find a payphone that actually worked. Twice she’d been stopped by soldiers who informed her, politely enough, that a curfew was in place and she’d need to get home. But Barb knew that, given the traffic, home wasn’t going to be that easy to reach, and she needed to talk to Kip. Only for a moment. Just to make sure he was safe.

She was convinced the phone companies let their booths fall into disrepair to force everyone to buy a cell. Not that cell phones were worth anything today. The network was obviously melting down. She only got through to Barney Tench on her eighth attempt, and even then the interference had been so bad it was hardly worth it.