readytorunbook Chapter 927
Chapter 927
……
Washington, D.C. The Pentagon.
The lights here have never been turned off. The bone-chilling cold of the central air conditioning blows on the heads of the most powerful people on the planet, day after day.
The decibel level in that oval conference room, known as the "War Room," is now so high it's almost threatening to lift the roof off.
"This is utter nonsense!"
A four-star army general with a full head of white hair and a neck and shoulders almost the same width was slumped over the table, yelling into the telephone. If looks could kill, the expeditionary force liaison officer on the other end of the line, who was already so scared he wet his pants, would have been chopped to pieces long ago.
"Mechanical giants? Tearing apart tanks with bare hands?! Have you mixed up the machines Disney sent to the front lines to show movies? Tell me, how much rum did you drink? Is Smith out of his mind?"
“But… General… the photo has already been faxed over…” A young female operator stood beside her, holding a sheet of thermal paper that had just been ejected from the old-fashioned fax machine, which resembled a large box. The paper was still a little hot to the touch, but her hands were colder than ice.
“I’ve seen this kind of photoshopped image a million times in Hollywood!” Another senator sitting across the round table—not Thomas from before, but a more conservative-looking man with several thick chins—tapped the table with an arrogant twang of his pen. “This must be a propaganda campaign by those Cuban communists! They’re trying to scare our voters with this cheap Godzilla story!”
"frighten?"
This time, it was David Paterson, the intelligence officer, who spoke again.
He didn't smoke his pipe today. He was holding a photocopy of the fax in his hand.
Between those rough ink specks and grains, as an intelligence expert who has spent his entire life dealing with these black-and-white images, he can see things that others cannot.
For example, the cut edge of that tank that was blown away. That wasn't just force; it was the mark of high-temperature cutting.
For example, certain reflective points on that black robotic arm—their position and angle perfectly conform to ergonomics, yet they even surpass a certain bizarre flexibility of human joints.
"I don't think any Hollywood prop master could create such a thing in a two-hour march, transport it to a ravine that even mountain goats can't climb, and then just set it up there waiting for the 2nd Army Battalion to come and take a picture."
Patterson's voice was a little hoarse. He slowly laid the paper flat in the center of the table.
"Admit it."
“We received intelligence long ago. About that ‘Red Light Project’…about that young man named Fang Yu…we’ve been pretending it was just some useless tower in a laboratory, but…”
He pointed to the bright red eye highlight in the photo, which was still glaringly obvious even with its rough pixels.
"Now, the devil is knocking on the door."
"Devil my ass!"
The radical representative, Senator Thomas, who had always advocated for direct annexation, was pale-faced but still held his neck up like a fighting rooster.
"This further underscores the necessity of our attack! If such things exist in our backyard—Cuba—it proves that even more weapons of mass destruction are hidden in those places!"
He stood up somewhat hysterically and waved his arms at the map.
"Send bombers! This time we're going to use them all! B-47s, B-52s! What kind of bullshit individual armor is that? I don't believe it! Nuke it! We have nuclear weapons! We..."
"Sit down!"
"You're ruining America! You're just a madman who only knows how to shout for violence!"
"Am I crazy? Look at this damn report! They're already hitting us in the ass with alien weapons, and you're still discussing legality?!"
The situation was completely out of control.
Both factions have completely lost their gentlemanly demeanor, or rather, their politician's composure.
One side says retreating is a disgrace, the other says continuing the fight is just giving the enemy experience. One side says they'll drop a nuclear bomb (completely disregarding how close that is to Florida), the other says China also has nuclear weapons, you're asking for death.
Countless folders, pencils, and even ashtrays flew through the air. The female secretary who was taking meeting minutes had long since huddled in a corner, clutching her typewriter. The Pentagon's core area, which was originally a symbol of the guardian of world order, now looked no more sophisticated than a bustling marketplace.
"enough."
A voice. Not loud, even a little hoarse and tired.
But it's like throwing an ice pick at absolute zero vertically into a pot of boiling oil.
The Secretary of State, who had been standing in front of that huge floor-to-ceiling window, watching the street scene of Washington in the darkest hour before dawn, slowly turned around.
His bespoke Savile Row suit looked somewhat wrinkled. His face, usually so poised and professional with a fake smile whether facing reporters or millions of voters, now looked as if it had been sculpted from an old rock.
Pale. Expressionless.
He didn't look at the generals and congressmen who were red-faced and visibly angry.
He didn't even look at the glaring photo on the table.
His gaze was somewhat unfocused, as if piercing through the walls to see the burning Cuban valley, or the unpredictable future, like a black abyss.
"Are you done arguing?"
He walked to the table. Instead of sitting in the chairman's chair, a symbol of power, he somewhat rudely placed his hands on the table and leaned forward. His posture resembled that of an old beast whose spine had been removed.
“You can argue until the ceiling collapses.”
The Secretary of State tapped the table very slowly and very lightly with his knuckles.
"Nuclear bombs. Bombing. Evacuation. Or send in another 100,000 lives."
He raised his eyelids, and his gaze, with its deep eye bags, swept across everyone's face with a chilling sharpness in an instant.
Everyone he saw, whether a four-star general or a powerful senator, had the half-swear word stuck in their throat as if it had been strangled.
The meeting room fell silent.
The silence was terrifying. All you could hear was the monotonous whirring of the air conditioner and someone's heavy, barely suppressed breathing.
“There are many options. I know you can come up with ten thousand strategic theories.”
The Secretary of State straightened up and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, as if that would allow him to breathe more easily.
“But before you make that damn decision that determines whether this country will survive for the next fifty years or become a pile of garbage like that (he casually pointed to the pile of debris).
"Who can answer one of my questions first?"
He held up one finger and pointed to the black outline in the photo in the center of the table.
His tone was so flat and monotone, as if he were asking if there was sugar in his coffee for breakfast.
"If we really did something—like what you said about wiping Cuba off the map."
"If there are more than just these three on that island."
"If that person, that young man from China, has a hundred of these, or a thousand of them."
"If they didn't use ships, but instead fell from the seabed—like that destroyer that mysteriously sank—or fell from the sky."
“If not here, but there.” He turned and pointed out the window to the White House and monuments still sleeping under the streetlights in Washington, “on Pennsylvania Avenue. While you’re mowing that damn lawn in front of your house.”
The Secretary of State closed his eyes, as if he were extremely tired.
"Can anyone tell me, even just a name?"
"Whether it's God or Satan."
"Who can help us break through its shell?"
No one speaks.
Even Thomas, who had been constantly talking about nuclear weapons, now stared with his mouth slightly agape at the enlarged photo of the ravaged M48 tank, his eyes revealing for the first time a genuine, soul-deep terror.
There is nothing there.
This room is filled with the vocabulary of the world's smartest minds and the controllers of the most powerful war machines.
After ruling out the possibility of total nuclear annihilation (which might not even be effective anyway).
It's true, really.
A solution, even if it's just a single potentially effective word.
All.
I can't find it.