“Mister President, count back from a hundred for me,” said the fat woman. “One hundred,” said the fat man, “ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety.”

John McCain had a number of severe health problems, all aggravated by his experience as a prisoner of war for the bulk of the conflict in Vietnam. Downed after his twenty-third bombardment mission against North Vietnam, he could do little but cheer as Nixon, elected on the promise to end the war honorably, stepped up the bombardment of Vietnam, extending it quietly to Cambodia.

Some wiseass knew they could count on her when the old man went under, and it hadn’t been fifteen minutes before Belya Revolutsiya had sent out texts to all of its members. The leak, who would remain anonymous to history, honestly thought something good would come of this; that freedom would be spread and the Bear’s iron heel caught in a steel trap.

John McCain’s chest had been punctured and trocarred and inflated. He would be unconscious for two and a half hours; the medication was supposed to last eight. It was 10:15 PM in Scottsdale and the weather had been getting balmier by the year, so it was just barely too warm to frost your breath.

-

In April 1975, as John McCain was finally recovering from his failed military career and his dreary civilian life and wife, a short man with surreal ideas who called himself Politique Potentielle marched under the blessing of the People’s Republic of China – sworn enemy of the USSR and its client North Vietnam, and sometime bedfellow of the United States – into Phnom Penh, a city of two and a half million souls with a history longer than that of much of Europe. He then ordered every man, woman, and child to leave.

-

It was fifteen minutes past midnight in Washington and Sarah Palin was wide awake, later than she liked to be but today she had to sit in the hot seat. Of course, her official duties were ostensibly very important, but Dave and Condi were probably going to be calling any shots that needed to be called.

The President, who was in the process of making a booty-call to the Marriott in which Todd Palin was sleeping, only half-noticed the phone ringing in the other room. It rang three times before being picked up.

It was 7:20 AM in Minsk, too early in the year for that to mean daylight, and a car had just exploded in front of the Serbian embassy, killing two dozen people and injuring scores more. The land-lines were buzzing in every direction; the mobile phones were even more wildly active. At 8:40 local time, orders from Moscow had every cellular tower and satellite under its control shut down as an emergency measure.

The Prime Minister’s intern was finishing the Serbian government’s mourning expression of sorrow and vow to spare no effort with the Belarussian government to bring the perpetrators to justice when, at around 6:32 AM local time, a commotion broke out in the phone room.

-

Cities, Politique claimed, were against the Maoist ideal of peasant self-sufficiency, which he took for the purest possible interpretation of communism. They were a legacy of the priests and the French and had to be destroyed.

-

At 7:15 local time, a crack squadron of irregular saboteurs closely associated with the Belarus Conservative Christian Party radical group White Revolution rode American-manufactured rail sleds over a disused spur of Soviet industrial track into the Smolensk Oblast, planting a series of synchronized time bombs on military and infrastructure targets and several targets of opportunity and severing, searing with strong acid, and otherwise disabling a wide range of telecom apparatus; they crossed into Belarus again at 6:45 local time, in the process giving an all-clear signal to be relayed to a team around 150 kilometers west in Vileyka; their operations, too, were conducted without incident; the garrison and vital personnel of the long-haul communications base located there – who realized only too late that they were now mute, and lacked the time to reroute signals usefully – were slaughtered to a man, and five minutes before planned Zero Hour (in actuality, fifteen), they had finished rigging charges to implode the facility.

-

Phnom Penh had several world-class hospitals, and they were emptied at a moment’s notice. Burn wards, intensive care, even surgical theaters. At gunpoint – at once.

-

Calls had just then begun to flood the cellular towers in and around Belarus. In town after town, men and women answered their phones curtly and went to retrieve their jogging outfits from their dressers. Cars, loaded heavy with small arms, rolled out of parking garages and remote facilities. On the other side of the world, a woman woke up Vice-President of the United States and ate breakfast President.

-

They’ve yet to fully count the dead.

-

The police noticed the occasional circling car, but they did not notice anything else suspicious. They did not have the aerial surveillance necessary to show the large population of joggers making brisk time away from downtown, in the case of Minsk at even greater and more regular speed.

Rudimentary safe areas were established; the ten minutes of delay increased the risk of early exposure but made it easier for every growing cell to find houses, shacks, garages, and makeshift bases.

A bald man told another over the phone in English that the Eagle slumbered and the other man just laughed. His clock said 7:15; it was a minute fast. Sarah Palin, two rooms over, was wondering whether to write a letter to her children or simply spend the evening with Todd; the night had been chosen for this procedure specifically because it was unlikely anything would happen, and nobody outside of the White House knew it was happening – as was normal procedure.

A man in a rented Toyota watched the streets of Minsk roll by. The Serbs, officially, had suggested that the retirement of Lukaschenko would provide a good opportunity to warm up relations with Europe. That was why he was here, or the official reason. The unofficial reason was that he suffered a spreading stomach cancer and the delusion that Lukaschenko was a Jew. His twelve-year-old boy saluted him as he pulled out of the Barysaw alley at 5:45 local time, not a moment late.

It was 7:20 Eastern European Time and the Toyota had caught fire. People stared and ran in each direction. Sasha only realized in his last conscious moment that the police officer at the front of the onrushing throng had his gun holstered, his gloved hand empty.

The first man to pick up the phone in Cvetkovich’s office at 6:32 heard a frantic, almost hyperventilating voice running fast in Russian. The callers grew more important and their messages less informative, and the news spread quickly; by 6:35 most of the high officials of Serbia and Russia were now aware that the government of Belarus had come under attack by hard-right insurgents in its largest cities. Lukashenko quickly assumed complete control over the Belarusian army and state and appealed to Russia for military assistance.

It took five more minutes for Medvedev to prepare a state of emergency, and each neighboring government had already begun vigorous debate over taking the same measure.

By 7:50 Eastern European time, Russia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine had already declared states of emergency; the government of Latvia was still debating the issue and Warsaw had decided to wait for word from NATO – in which the panic was only beginning.

-

At 1 AM Washington time, a runner for Secretary Petraeus knocked on the Lincoln Bedroom door, and the acting President was informed as of 1:02 AM that the situation in Belarus had come to a head, with Lukaschenko seizing complete power and mobilizing the Army to deal with protestors. The almost instant Russian diplomatic response – compared to the fairly sluggish military reaction – indicated that Lukashenko made prior preparation to violate the Tallinn Framework. Within five minutes, the Tallinn Framework – an agreement under which Lukaschenko would draw his presence in government down to an advisory role and leave pro-US democratic forces to take formal power – had been fully explained to the President.

“Sounds like we’d better call the Russkies’ bluff. What do we have ready to rumble?”

“We’ve got a detachment of the First Airborne ready in Ramstein, Madame President.”

“Keep an eye out on the current situation, and let’s see how far it goes.”

“With respect, the Russians are right on the border. If we wait for them to act, they’ll be in Minsk before we’re in Poland.”

“OK then. Is it them who’re the good guys or am I thinking of someone else?”

“They’re our allies, Madame President.”

“Get ‘em on the phone and put our birds in the air. If nothing happens, they land as close to Belarus as they can. If something does, they keep going.”

“I’ll call the Joint Chiefs. I’d assemble a full Cabinet but they’ve got the Karate Kid squared away for security reasons – we’ll get who we can otherwise.”

As of 9:00 Moscow time, the Army received visual confirmation that communications with the Indian Ocean fleet had gone dead, White infiltrators had destroyed vital apparatus not only in Belarus but in Russia, and contact had yet to be reestablished with the 2nd ObrSpN, the Spetsnaz unit which the Belarus crisis was closest to. Frantic efforts had begun to find replacements, and an ad-hoc team had already been assembled and launched from Kaliningrad. The destruction of Russian property within Russia meant that military action against the White insurgents was now urgent, and also that the Russian expedition would be conducted under the legal aegis of Russia rather than Belarus.

Contact was established by a Spetsnaz officer at 9:15 seeking permission for immediate launch towards Minsk. Permission was granted, and a minute had not passed before their first helicopter made its way out of Pskov.

-

The Americans and Russians crossed the border around 8:30 Eastern European Time, each seeking to establish contact with the lawful government in Minsk. The Belaya Revolutsiya was already in control of most of the corridor between Poland and the capital, but Minsk itself remained a no-man’s-land, too embroiled in chaos to respond militarily to the entry of foreign rapid-insertion forces. Three Spetsnaz and two USMC choppers made their way immediately for the Presidential Palace.

The ad-hoc agreement on Belarus had just been struck in Brussels when it was tested: that military involvement in the explosive conflict – favored by Germany, Greece, Italy, France, and the US but opposed or not actively favored by most of the remainder – would be discretionary until any foreign power made an active effort to militarily expel NATO forces. At 7:48 European time, confirmation arrived that Russian special forces had opened fire on a US task-force sent to secure the President of Belarus.

Lithuania, Norway, and Spain declared neutrality – and were summarily expelled. As of 7:53 EUT, a NATO police action had formally begun in Belarus.

-

Kaliningrad had become a paranoiac fortress over the course of a little more than an hour. Official confirmation that war on Belarus had begun meant that the Russian exclave would be the first Russian target for NATO operations against Belarus. Worse, direct communication with Russia had been astoundingly difficult.

Surveillance and recon had yet to reveal any aggressive Polish troop movement toward the border; the sea was a more disquieting possibility, as the conquest or isolation of Kaliningrad meant that naval operations would have greatly extended range.

At 9:25 Eastern European time, reconnaisance and surveillance made their worst fears real: a large fleet moving at more than 20 knots directly towards them had cleared Thiessow. By the time closer recon had revealed submarines, extended radar showed cruise missiles heading in at a glancing trajectory.

Communication with main command could not be established permanently, and reconnaisance had positively identified the Barracuda-class Duquesne as the Triomphant-class Terrible – an error which falsely confirmed the feared presence of nuclear weapons in the NATO sea taskforce.

-

Sarah Palin quietly thanked God that France was under nuclear bombardment rather than the United States, and actually had to be talked into getting onto Marine One to the Stockwell Valley Facility under Spruce Knob. She had expected something like War Games; the facility looked like nothing so much as the top floor of an office building, albeit deep underground. There were even taps for Starbucks and Budweiser, and just above the half-filled red curve streaking from Yakutia to the Mat-Su valley she could make out a Google copyright.

-

The President of the United States stumbled arm in arm with Mayo’s best laproscopists; it was as bright as dusk out but not much later than 1 AM. His Secret Service rushed from gurney to gurney rendering assistance as they could, leaving him more helpless than any President in the last century could have been. His head was in the clouds and his chest felt fit to explode, and it seemed the only thing he could do while fully conscious was feel enough searing agony to come close to vomiting. An olive-skinned nurse younger than Bridget passed by, iron-faced, holding a truncheon and pistol. Her scrubs had ‘TRIAGE’ on them in fresh yellow paint. He felt cold, even though it was over a hundred outside and there weren’t enough burn beds on Earth to hold the Phoenix metro’s victims.

People recognized John sitting there in his gown, and eventually they noticed he was crying. There were a thousand reasons they thought of for why. But it was only pain.

It was only pain.