Better for Everyone

Chapter 6: Coding Chaos

None of the men turned away and Travis wondered how many of them were going to wish they had.

Nuuanu-Punchbowl, Hawaii. USA.

One of the things Sasha missed the most from the time before was the sound of her keys hitting the table by door at her house in Alexandria.

Back in the times before, once the Metro train stopped at Braddock Road station she was only a few minutes from home. She would always walk with her keys in her hands - not that Alexandria was dangerous, but more out of the knowledge that familiarity breeds complacency. Her office key, her two house keys and her car key made a nice tight pair of brass knuckles.

Now that she lived in Hawaii, she didn't own a car and her office door didn't even have a lock. She was denied that simple pleasure, that final metallic Clunk of her keys hitting the table and announcing to the house that she was home.

Instead, she placed her lone house key back in her purse and left her purse on the entryway table.

Sasha smelled the pungent odor of marijuana wafting into the house from outside. Her brother was probably on the hammock getting high again. She went to the kitchen and rummaged through the junk drawer for a flat-head screwdriver. She found the screw driver and went to the master bedroom where she kneeled down in front of a wall outlet. Sasha used the screwdriver to unscrew and remove the outlet. She reached inside and pulled out her engagement ring. She held the ring in her hand for a moment. She hoped that she would feel some kind of emotion, but after five years of war she had nothing left. Her husband was dead and this gold wasn't doing any good in a wall outlet. She put it on her finger one last time... nothing.

She pulled her wedding ring off her finger. She rose and went outside to see her brother.

Her brother lounged in the hammock. The joint had burned out and he was browsing Facebook on his phone.

"Hey," he said when he noticed her. "How's work? You know I made um... what do you call it? Food. It's in the oven."

"Thank you," Sasha said. She sat down on the hammock. "Can we talk?"

"What?" Her brother asked.

She pushed the gold ring into his hands.

"I need you to take Emily and go to the big island. I need you to go tomorrow and I need you to stay there. Whatever you do, the two of you can't come back to Oahu. At least not until after next week."

Her brother looked more confused than he normally did.

"Why?" He asked. "What's going on?"

ISI Headquarters, Islamabad, Pakistan

"That is a problem," Colonel Minhas said as he looked over the satellite photographs of the SOGS Maryland. "It looks like they took the tarps down."

Colonel Minhas looked across his desk at the intelligence analyst who had brought him the photographs. The analysis was a mousy man who had obviously gotten to this position by tradecraft instead of field work. The geeks were taking over the world.

"What's the range of those missiles from King's Bay?" Colonel Minhas asked.

"About 4000 nautical miles," The man answered. Enough to hit the American Hawaiian Islands, Anchorage, Toronto, and London."

"But not here," Colonel Minhas said. "Not Islamabad. Not Mecca."

"No," the man said. "But as I'm sure you could surmise, if the submarine were to be put to sea, they could exact revenge on us for supporting the Americans."

"I thought you said that they couldn't make it out of port?"

"Forgive me, sir, but the Americans never were forthcoming on the state of their nuclear arsenal. They might not even know. That ship's been in Gilead's hands for five years, who knows if it works anymore? But if it does... once it submerges, we won't be able to kill it."

"So we need to destroy it," Colonel Minhas said. "And we need to do it before we undertake this joint operation the American's have been talking about. It will cost us. The airspace above that submarine is the most heavily defended in the world. We'll lose a lot of pilots."

The analyst sat back in his chair. He held up his hand and pointed his finger at the sky.

Colonel Minas shook his head.

"That cost us a quarter billion dollars."

"I didn't say we'd do it for free," the analysis said. "We're helping the Americans rob a bank. It's only fair that we get a cut."