John Swinburn

I entered through the monstrous wrought iron and glass front door of the house, in spite of having been told to enter through the kitchen door in the garage. Entry through a garage is just too casual, in my opinion, especially if the house is over-sized and oozes conspicuous, ostentatious luxury. I wanted to get the full effect of walking into a rich man’s home. After waiting an appropriate time for the door bell to be answered, I opened the  door and stepped inside.

Beyond the castle gate of a door, a huge cavernous entry made me feel tiny. The flooring, slabs of polished jade, reflected the massive chandelier and the clerestory windows thirty feet above.  Thirty yards in front of me, a wall of window twenty feet tall revealed a lush, colorful garden sloping up toward a thicket of pine trees.

“I thought I told you to come in through the garage!” Anchor Steel’s words, spoken in a deep and loud voice, betrayed his anger. As I turned toward the sound of that angry snarl, I saw the shotgun in his right hand. “You’re lucky to be alive, you sonofabitch!”

“Sorry, the light wasn’t on in the garage and I didn’t want to get shot by a concerned neighbor!”

“You see any houses close enough for a neighbor to see you?” His tone suggested he thought I was stupid or lying. Or both.

“Never mind. Come on and I’ll show you.”

I followed Steel past a huge kitchen island flanked by stainless steel and glass cabinetry into a much smaller, dimly lit room. Almost immediately upon entering the door, Steel seemed to plunge in front of me. I paused for a moment, confused by his sudden drop. Ah, a steep stairway. We descended to the bottom, at least fifteen feet.

This was no rich man’s house. This was a cave. The floors were rough, yet moderately level, but the walls were craggy outcroppings of rock.  At the far end of the cave, several lights dangled from a tangle of cords, illuminating what appeared to be a dusty, scratched casket.

“Found it while I was digging for the safe room.”

“Safe room?  Like a storm cellar?”

“No. A room for my safes. Some of my valuables don’t belong on display; this is gonna be where I keep ’em.”

“Ah, okay. Well, what about that casket?” I pointed to it, the only distinguishable object in the room.”

“That’s why I called you over. I want you to appraise it.”

“The casket?”

“No, what’s inside.”

Steel trudged across the uneven floor to the casket and lifted the lid.  Inside, the length of the coffin was taken up by shiny cobalt blue fabric covering something. A corpse? An ample sprinkling of polished stones that looked like emeralds, sapphires, diamonds and rubies filled the folds of the blue fabric. A skull, with dried skin still attached and topped with wisps of black hair, emerged from the blue dress.

“Who is that?”

“I don’t know. And I really don’t care. What I want to know is this: what’s the value of these stones and are they traceable?”

I wasn’t absolutely sure what he was asking, but I had a pretty good idea.

“So, you’d like to sell the stones, quietly, yes?”

Steel looked at me hard.

“I want to know the value of the stones and whether they’re traceable.  And I want assurances you’re as discreet as I’ve been told you are. ”

He still had the shotgun.

“I’m even more discreet than you’ve heard. I’ll need to examine the stones closely and then do some research.”

“All right. But you’ll need to do the examination and research right here. If you need any resources other than what I’ve got here at the house, we’ll go get them. Together.”

Steel’s eyes weren’t hard to read.  They said, in no uncertain terms, “Ruthless.”

The empty streets of Manhattan, Kansas, captured on live internet video cams, seemed surreal to Connor Embleman. Not a living soul stirred in the city that, one week earlier, was home to fifty-six thousand people. Though the streets were absent any traffic, stoplights continued to function, one of the only ways to tell that some of the video feeds—the ones with no trees, no bushes, no movement at all—were not simply still shots.

As fire chief of the Manhattan Fire Department, he had been among the last to leave the city in the wake of the mandatory evacuation order. He—along with Cage Mackey, the chief of police, and the director of emergency management, Sabrina Sammons—had argued against an evacuation.  No solid evidence of a real and imminent threat had been presented to them. The mayor, though, told them the matter wasn’t up for debate. She suggested to the three of them that they not go on record opposing the evacuation. If something did happen, she said, their opposition would destroy public faith in their leadership and ability to protect the public.

Neither the mayor of Manhattan nor the governor of Kansas had ordered the evacuation. The recommendation to  evacuate came from the Pentagon and was ordered by the President of the United States. Contrary to the hundreds of rumors flying at breakneck speed across the city and, indeed the world, the threat was not Al Queda or ISIL.

Shoko Matsumoto, the leader of a Japanese group that called itself Bushidō, issued the threat. Bushidō was formed in 2011 to exact revenge for what Matsumoto considered the most egregious acts of terrorism ever committed, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bushidō had issued direct threats before, but those threats had not made their way into the public discourse for many reasons, not the least of which was the consensus among terrorism experts that the group did not have the capacity to carry out even small-scale attacks.

The consensus about Bushidō’s impotence quickly changed with the detonation of a small nuclear device on Clipperton Island, an uninhabited coral atoll south of Mexico and west of Guatemala.  The blast took place forty-eight hours after a message was delivered, by courier, to the offices of the Consulate General of the United States in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.  The message read as follows:

In two days time, Bushidō will detonate a nuclear device on Clipperton Island to demonstrate our ability to carry out our objectives.

Following the detonation, Bushidō will carry out an act of retaliation and revenge against the United States for its brutal slaughter of innocent Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you follow our instructions, there will be only one act of retaliation and it will be on a far smaller scale than your attacks on our people.

We intend to repay the fruits of your Manhattan Project with our own Manhattan Project, the destruction of Manhattan, Kansas. You must accept the destruction of Manhattan, Kansas as the punishment for your country’s unspeakable deeds. If you allow the destruction to take place without attempting to find our devices or evacuate the city, the score will be settled.

However, if you attempt to find our device or if you attempt to save your people through evacuation, we will visit on you an even more horrific event, death and destruction beyond anything your country has ever witnessed, the total obliteration of another Manhattan, the Manhattan in New York.

The detonation on Clipperton Island was not noticed by the public, nor reported by the media. It was noticed, though, by the U.S. government and the detonation was detected by major global powers including among others Russia, China, Japan, and Germany. Diplomatic channels quickly assured news of the blast would not be disclosed.

Following the President’s order to evacuate Manhattan, Kansas, a second message from Bushidō reached the Embassy of the United States in Ottawa, Canada.

Bushidō is disappointed in your failure to follow our instructions. Shortly after you receive this message, the city of Manhattan, Kansas will cease to exist. One day later, New York City and, specifically Manhattan, will pay for your President’s bad faith decision.”

Connor Embleman’s eyes were on the monitor when the image of empty street disappeared, replaced by broken, chaotic black and white lines.  Sixty miles away, sitting in the Topeka Fire Chief’s office on Southeast Jefferson Street, Connor felt the concussion of the blast.

In Washington, DC, the President of the United States watched as a video feed from a camera trained on Manhattan from thirty miles away displayed the brilliant blast and the ensuing mushroom cloud. The moment the explosion took place, her eyes widened and her lips parted slightly as involuntarily she sucked in air.