Edge of Apocalypse Read online

  Exactly one minute had passed since the Joshua-I missile left the launch silo on the Tiger Shark. Sixty seconds, the longest sixty seconds in Joshua Jordan's life.

  As with all launch-based missile-defense systems, there was a narrow range of time when the weapon could effectively engage its target and deploy its defense system. This was usually within the first thirty to sixty seconds of flight. But they were at seventy-five seconds now, and the Korean missiles were still tracking steadily toward Manhattan.

  Several of his team members couldn't hold back their emotions any longer. Tears began streaming from their eyes.

  Down in the Tiger Shark, the weapons officer, eyes fixed on his radar screen, was cursing under his breath, "Stop 'em, stop 'em, do it, do it..."

  The commander standing over him was gritting his teeth hard. So hard that everyone on the weapons deck could hear the sickening, grinding sound.

  On the top floor of the Jordon Building in New York, Joshua and his team stared in stunned silence at the videophone waiting for some change, some hope, some chance.

  Nothing...

  Joshua turned away and pulled out his Allfone. He punched up Abby's cell number. At least he still had time to say good-bye to his wife and daughter. Tell them he was sorry. Try to explain he had failed them, failed everyone. Maybe he could even get through to his son. He certainly owed him an apology. Actually, he owed him several. Where would he start?

  Joshua couldn't believe he was about to say good-bye to his wife and family...forever.

  When his wife answered the phone, he could tell she had been crying.

  "Abby...," he started to say, but the words began to catch.

  He couldn't go on, there was nothing more he could say, but just knowing she was there on the other end was something at least...something to hang on to until everything exploded into a fiery hell for all of them.

  "Colonel!" the voice was the commander's coming over the videophone.

  Joshua wasn't used to being called by his former military rank. At first he didn't connect the voice to himself...that the man on the other end was talking to him.

  "Colonel Jordan!" the voice shouted again.

  Joshua spun around and stared at the monitor.

  "I think..." But the commander didn't need to finish his sentence. The radar-tracking screen clearly showed the two North Korean missiles looping around in a perfect duet and heading in the opposite direction, back toward their point of origin.

  The weapons officer couldn't control himself. "Li'l jammer got 'em!" he yelled out.

  The entire office erupted in one tremendous unified roar, the cheer carrying down the hall like wildfire until the whole top floor was celebrating...it was New Year's Eve, Mardi Gras, and the Super Bowl all rolled into one. People began hugging each other, jumping up on tables, laughing, weeping for joy, happy to be alive.

  Then Joshua remembered Abby.

  "Abby!" he yelled into his cell phone.

  "Joshua?" There was still a question in her voice.

  "I just wanted...I wanted to tell you I love you so much," he shouted at the top of his lungs for all to hear. "So very, very much. We're going to be fine baby, fine, all of us, just fine!"

  "Admiral..." The XO spoke urgently, breaking into the admiral's thoughts of North Korean triumph.

  He pointed down at the radar screen. Something was wrong, something incomprehensible.

  "Is the radar broken?" the admiral asked as he stared at the two blips on the scope, the radar screen clearly showing the two Korean missiles heading back toward their ship.

  The radar officer was too overwhelmed to answer.

  "What does this mean?" demanded the admiral.

  "They're coming back, sir," offered the XO.

  "Coming back?"

  "Yes, sir. The missiles are...they're returning..."

  The two men were huddled over the radar officer's station, talking in hushed whispers. The rest of the crew was looking over their shoulders from their posts, not sure what to make of this strange anomaly. Within moments, however, they would come to understand that they had all stepped into a collective nightmare. And it was quickly unfolding in front of them.

  "How can this be possible?" The admiral's voice was deeply distressed and guttural.

  "I don't know, sir, but they're coming back. Very close..."

  "I don't understand...when did your radar pick this up..."

  "Just now, sir. The Americans must have jammed our incoming radar detection system..."

  "What do we do?" The admiral queried with a tragic astonishment that was still rooted in denial.

  The XO stood there, afraid to speak, he had no answer.

  "What do we do?!"

  This time the admiral yelled for the whole bridge to hear. Suddenly everything had grown very quiet with the only sound being the beeping of the radar as the green blips inched closer and closer to the digital image of their ship.

  "What...do...we...do?"

  Still no one offered up an answer.

  The admiral looked at the faces of the men surrounding him on the bridge. In their vacant stares and their look of shock, the admiral now understood something...he realized he was asking the wrong question.

  "What have I done?"

  The words fell from his mouth like an indictment.

  The men didn't respond. They just stood at their stations, waiting for an answer that would never come.

  The admiral straightened his uniform jacket and saluted crisply as he walked across the bridge. With eyes held high, gun still clutched in his hand, he moved past the bloodied area where the captain had been executed. Without a glance, he stepped out onto the upper deck. Once alone in the open sea air, he looked up into the sky as if to try and see the missiles as they headed back to their home.

  "What have I done?" he said, now in a hoarse whisper, speaking only to himself.

  He didn't wait for an answer this time. He immediately placed the gun's barrel into his mouth.

  Whether the admiral saw the blinding white megaton flash before pulling the trigger was inconsequential, as it would have been only a matter of milliseconds. The twin nuclear explosions vaporized the ship and all its crew in a merciless tornado of fire and cataclysmic concussion.

  By Sunday, the shock of that day, the nuclear attempt against New York City, and the stunned news reports about the nukes incinerating the North Korean ship, were starting to abate slightly, but only slightly.

  Up in the pulpit of the Eternity Church in Manhattan, Pastor Paul Campbell was standing silent before his congregation. The sanctuary was packed. Overflow chairs had to be added. It was the first Sunday service following the near strike. A nervous anticipation rippled through the crowd, as all eyes where transfixed on the pulpit. Campbell knew why these people were here, some with fear, but all with expectation on their faces. Waiting for some word of comfort, some truth, or maybe both, about a world that seemed to be careening out of control.

  Pastor Campbell looked over the crowd. He saw a number of new faces. But he also recognized some familiar ones. Abigail Jordan, a regular attender, was seated five rows from the front on the aisle seat.

  Looking down at the open Bible on the pulpit stand, Campbell fixed his eyes on the verses he had marked there. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter twenty-four. His mind was weighted down with the immensity of the subject of his sermon. But more than that, his heart was pierced by the empty gazes of those who had wandered in from the street that morning to hear...anything. Lost looks and vacant stares. Troubled souls.

  He whispered a wordless prayer.

  Then he began.

  "Some of you have come here today for comfort. Others out of curiosity. Still others for a reason that is two thousand years old. Toward the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus gave a great lament over the city of Jerusalem, and then He made a startling prophecy about the destruction of the great Herodian Temple in that city, a prophecy that would be fulfilled in AD 70, just a few decades later. Leaving the Tem
ple that day, Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem, and He sat down with His disciples, perhaps under the shade of one of the trees, and they asked Him two questions. First, they wanted to know when the Temple would be destroyed. But they also asked Him another question, one that may be on your minds and hearts today. They wanted to know what the signs would be of Christ's second coming and what signs would mark the end of the age, that final chapter of the world as we know it."

  Campbell laid his finger down on his Bible next to verses six through eight.

  "Jesus said that nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom. That implies worldwide conflict. We have already seen two world wars in the last century. And just a few days ago we narrowly missed what could have been the beginning of yet another one. Jesus also said that there would be famines. In our nation alone, in the agricultural breadbasket of America, we are now seeing drought and pestilence far beyond anything we had during the dustbowl years of the Great Depression. Jesus said there would be earthquakes. Now friends, look at the last six months. An earthquake in Indonesia, a ten on the Mercalli scale, with twelve being the worst. Then an earthquake that ripped through Guatemala, an eleven on the scale. And finally an eleven-point-five earthquake in Turkey."

  He closed his Bible. What he would say now had been imprinted on his heart.

  "Some of you listening to me this morning don't know Jesus Christ. You haven't opened the door. You haven't allowed Him to come in, to change you, save you, and fill you with His presence. For you, images of the end of the age, the cracking open of the earth, the toppling of kingdoms, these things hold nothing for you but terrifying darkness, hopelessness, and fear. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can join the assembly of those who know and follow Jesus. And while none of us relishes the idea of the destruction that is destined to occur, we have something that sees far beyond the smoldering rubble that will last only a little while. A future kingdom that will be filled with light and peace and love. We have a living hope. And so can you. You too can join that chorus in the last book of the Bible, in the second to last verse, those who can boldly shout out, 'Amen. Come Lord Jesus!'"

  Several people in the crowd shouted out amens. But most of those in their seats were silent. A few who were visiting for the first time had grimaces of disgust or even cynicism. Many were deep in thought. A few, wide-eyed, had the look of those who were waiting for something but didn't know exactly what it was.

  Campbell finally directed himself to his listeners, sweeping his gaze across the sea of faces.

  "So those were the questions of the disciples that day. As they sat up on the Mount of Olives, looking over the city of Jerusalem."

  Then he asked something else, and when he did he leaned forward and took in row after row, face after face.

  "Now it's time to get honest. As you look to the future, what is your reaction? Fear? Or faith?"

  His question reverberated through the large sanctuary with the high vaulted, cathedral ceiling.

  EIGHT

  Two Weeks Later

  After all the political speeches and public outpouring of support and relief, New York was beginning to get back to normal. Special Agent John Gallagher of the FBI cursed the traffic as he sat gridlocked on Broadway, trying to head uptown during the morning rush. Then he thought back to the terror they had all felt that morning, popped another Ho Ho into his mouth, and was grateful to be driving through Manhattan today.

  Gallagher was part of an elite counterterrorism unit. On the evening of the attack, he'd taken the ferry out to Staten Island to conduct an investigation into chatter on a popular social networking site, chatter that seemed to be targeting the Statue of Liberty. It turned out it was just some kids trying to improve their rep at a local high school by co-opting the term terrorist, much like wanna-be rappers used to throw around the word gangsta to build their street cred. Still it was his job to check it out.

  He was older than most of the other agents in his unit and probably exceeded them in weight by at least fifty pounds. That was the price of riding a desk for most of the last ten years. They kept him on the unit for his local expertise. But the truth was--and deep down he knew it--he was little more than glorified set dressing. It looked good to have a bona fide hero on the team.

  The recent missile attack wasn't his first experience with real terror in New York. On the morning of 9/11, he'd taken the PATH train into the World Trade Center, with the intention of walking the few blocks up to 26 Federal Plaza, to the New York field office of the FBI. But just as he came out of the Port Authority train station, the first plane hit the North Tower. He spent the next hour trying to get as many of the injured to safety as he could.

  By 9:59 a.m., he was crossing the plaza in front of the towers, helping an injured office worker, when the South Tower came down. That's the last thing he remembered of that day. But he was lucky. He woke up in a hospital bed with a broken back, a broken arm, and several cracked ribs, not to mention all the toxic dust he ingested. But he was alive, more than could be said for over three thousand souls.

  He received the FBI's Medal of Meritorious Achievement and an honorary Citation of Valor from the New York City Fire Department and the City of New York.

  After 9/11, when the FBI was looking to beef up its Counterterrorism Unit in New York, he was the first on the list. But after a couple of years his injuries began to get the better of him, and he had to curtail his fieldwork. Out of necessity he'd become somewhat of an expert in using the Internet to track terrorist cells since it didn't require him to leave his desk.

  But every so often he would be called out from behind his desk, usually for something unusual, like this Statue of Liberty threat. He was en route to Staten Island when the news broke about the incoming nukes. Though there was panic on the boat at first, a semblance of calm came over the passengers when the captain headed out to sea--away from Manhattan--at full speed. Gallagher spent the whole time staring at the skyline from the back rail of the ferry, unable to help this time, wondering whether this would be the last time he'd ever see his beloved skyline.

  The fact that America hadn't immediately leveled the entire country of North Korea in retaliation surprised Gallagher. The 9/11 attack on American soil had launched two wars. But this time the leader of the Free World was playing things more cautiously. Back when he was a senator from Iowa, Virgil Corland had tacitly supported the War on Terror. But now, as president, he was weighed down by indecision and a devastated economy that became more indebted to foreign nations each year.

  The U.S. could have wiped out the little dictator with the push of a button, but President Corland hesitated, fearing it would plunge the world into a global conflagration. The United Nations counseled restraint, and after Kim Jung-un's government indirectly seemed to admit that the attack may have been caused by a communications error, the U.S. backed away from any type of action against North Korea.

  Gallagher thought they should have at least tossed a couple of nukes over there for good measure, but the country had bowed to cries of "One World, One Peace" emanating from the new power centers of Europe and Asia. The time to act had been the first seventy-two hours, yet an ailing and increasingly ineffectual President Corland had faltered. And America had taken yet another giant step backward in the eyes of much of the world.

  Within an hour after the destruction of the North Korean vessel, rumors began to spring up like mushrooms on the Internet that the Korean ship hadn't actually launched the two nuclear missiles at all but had been on the receiving end of a first strike by the United States. Most of this web chatter was silly ranting from the alien-abduction conspiracy crowd, but it kept the media bloodsuckers yakking and had the potential to fuel extremists around the world, feeding their hatred toward America.

  As soon as the nukes had been deflected, Gallagher, still on the ferry, got a call from the field office on his cell phone. There would be a new assignment...this one tailor-made for him. Dozens of people had
been killed in the panic on the streets of New York that evening and nearly a thousand more injured. Someone high up in the government had leaked information to the media. That was tantamount to premeditated murder, or at the very least, reckless homicide--considering the resulting death and destruction it caused. One of the first rules everyone learns is you don't yell "fire!" in a crowded theater. Someone yelled fire, and now it was up to Gallagher to find out who.

  The first person to go live with the news was a shock jock named Ivan Teretsky at WFQL Radio. "Esteemed" for his bombastic political pronouncements and on-air stunts, which once included the playing of a tape-recording of a prominent governor and a prostitute while they were going at it, he was best known to New Yorkers as "Ivan the Terrible."

  Gallagher was now winding his way through miserable traffic to interview the radio host at his station on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He steered through Columbus Circle and drove along the park to 66th, then pulled into an underground parking garage a block before the street turned onto Riverside Drive.

  In the elevator, Gallagher steeled himself for the interview. He was well aware of the kind of stunts this nutcase could pull. Teretsky might try to put him on the air, turn the whole thing into one big joke. But Gallagher wasn't laughing. People had died, and somebody was responsible.

  He gave his name to a pretty receptionist at the front desk and was told to wait. "Mr. Teretsky is just finishing up his show."