by Jack Mars
“Thus allowing the construction of a miniature bomb that can fit inside the tectonic weapon,” Kurt said.
“Exactly correct,” Vasil said. The translator sounded as though he were pleased by Kurt’s acumen.
The conversation had taken an odd turn. It seemed like they were talking to Vasil only now. Was Putin still in the room? Susan had no idea.
“Why would you do that, Vasil?” she said. “Why would anybody do that?”
“It is a self-defense system, Madam President, a fail-safe. In the moments before the device launches the electromagnetic pulse, it acquires a great deal of directed energy and becomes very loud. The delay, combined with the sound, combined with the infrared strobe, makes the weapon vulnerable to detection and attack. The scientists of the time—recall that the 1980s were an era of heightened tensions—believed that the possibility of an atomic explosion, and the resulting destruction and spread of radioactivity, would discourage our enemies from attempting to destroy the device. At best, any enemy would be confronted with a difficult decision in which there were no good options. Destroying the device invites disaster. Allowing the device to operate also invites disaster.”
“But they would have to know about it first!” Susan said. “It doesn’t work if the enemy doesn’t know it’s an atomic bomb.”
“The intention was to inform enemies of this, of course,” Vasil said.
“This is the first we’re hearing of it,” Susan said.
“The device was never deployed. Only three were ever made. Two of them were disassembled in 1989, and their enriched radioactive components secured in nuclear containment facilities. Were the device ever to have been deployed, I’m certain everyone would have been advised of its capabilities.”
Susan took a deep breath. “It’s deployed now.”
“A regrettable accident, if true.”
Kurt spoke up again. “What, if anything, can we do to stop the weapon, once it’s been activated?”
“You can turn off the oscillator. It is set by what is essentially an iron bar that can be placed at any of eleven settings. The default setting is off, of course. After that, there is ten percent power, twenty percent, and so on up to one hundred percent, based on the size of the earthquake you want to cause. Note, however, that in most cases, the iron bar must be turned using an engine-driven machine that is part of the weapon system. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for the average person to move the bar at all on their own.”
Susan rubbed her forehead. She almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She didn’t want to believe it. “What is the point of that?”
“Apparently, the idea was that the engine-drive machine for turning the bar would remain in the possession of the unit commanding officer. In this way, during the delay between turning on the device and activation, rank-and-file soldiers could not change their minds and decide to turn it off. Also, commanding officers would be instructed to destroy the engine-driven machine as soon as the oscillator was set.”
“Oh boy,” Kurt said. “So if the commanding officer manages to destroy the machine that sets the oscillator…”
“Yes,” Vasil said.
“It becomes impossible to turn off the weapon,” Kurt said.
“Very difficult, yes. Nearly impossible, I’d say.”
“Vasil,” Susan said. “Is Vladimir still there?”
“Uh, the President was called away to another meeting while we were chatting. He did empower me to say that we will immediately forward scans of original schematics for the weapon to our contacts at your Department of Defense. This may have already happened. Madam President, he also said to share his regrets about the loss of this tectonic weapon, but his great pleasure in speaking with you twice in one day.”
“That’s wonderful,” Susan said. “Please give him my warm regards. Also please remind him of my earlier point—if we are attacked with this weapon, we will consider it a Russian act of war.”
“Of course,” Vasil said.
Kurt and Susan hung up their telephones. Susan sat quietly in her chair for a long moment. She looked out the tall windows at the Rose Garden. The grounds were deep in snow, but it was a sunny day. Glimmering fingers of ice hung from a wooden trestle. On a normal day, she might eat lunch now.
She wasn’t hungry.
“What do you want to do?” Kurt said.
“Well, let’s make sure Luke Stone’s team has all of that information, and whatever schematics the Russians send. Stone is the closest thing we have to a presence on those islands. How long would it take to get the military there?”
Kurt shrugged. “Supersonic jet fighters could scramble from bases in Germany or England and be there very quickly. But actual troops on the ground, searching for and interdicting the weapon? I have no idea. Several hours, I imagine. But we still don’t even know if that’s where the weapon is.”
Susan sat and stared at the screen where Stephen Lief had been earlier. It was still on. CNN was playing. Two talking heads, both men, were on either side of a split screen. One of them, an overweight man with a beard and glasses, was red-faced and gesticulating violently with his stubby index finger.
Where is the President? read the caption along the bottom.
“Susan?” Kurt said.
“Call the usual suspects back in,” Susan said. “Leaks or no leaks. The damage is already done, so get everybody in there. I want to have a strategy in place and underway within two hours.”
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
6:18 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (1:18 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Atlantic Ocean
“Did you get the drone?” Luke said.
The helipad was a concrete promontory on a rocky bluff up the hillside from the airport. They’d had to hire a van to get up here, but the pad gave 360-degree views of the surrounding island. Far to the west, the sun was sinking into the ocean in an explosion of pink, red, and purple. Directly up the coast to the northeast, the glow from the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife lit up the already dark sky.
Ed, Luke, and Dunn were moving heavy duffel bags and rucksacks full of weapons from the van to the helicopter. They had all slept a bit on the plane, and the whole team seemed refreshed and ready to go. Luke also had three Dexies in a sealed plastic baggie in his pocket—those were ready to go, too.
The chopper was a red six-seat Bell 407, a typical tourist ride. It would do. The pilot was a skinny young guy. Standing on the pad in the semi-darkness with his big helmet on, he almost looked like a lollipop. The warm wind was swirling, the windsocks on the pad shifting directions crazily.
Luke was on the phone with Swann.
“Yeah, I got it,” Swann said. “It’s up. It’s got good optics, and it’s easy to handle. I’m flying it while I speak to you. I’ve got the specs they sent from Washington about the tectonic weapon, and I’m scanning for any infrared strobe. Nothing so far, which I guess means if the weapon is down there, they haven’t turned it on yet.”
“Good. Did Washington get you a drone?”
“No. They wouldn’t authorize it right away, so I got one on my own.”
Luke nodded. “Okay. Where’d you manage to find one around here?”
Swann hesitated.
“Can we talk about that later?”
Luke rolled his eyes. “What? No, just tell me now.”
Ed and Dunn began shoving the bags into the back of the chopper.
“I bought it,” Swann said.
Luke felt a torpedo knock a hole in the hull that was the SRT budget. It was like a sudden punch in the gut. “Swann, you bought a drone? Are you kidding? We can’t afford that. We don’t have the allocations to just up and buy whatever we—”
Swann became irritated instantly. “What is it with you, Stone? They put you in charge of an agency, and suddenly you’re like someone’s grandmother, hoarding dollar bills in the pockets of your bathrobe. Yes, I bought a drone. I got a very good deal on it. It’s a
Chinese CH-3, several years old, but still in good shape. It was a fraction of what you’d pay for a similar American drone. It’s got two air-to-ground missiles, and a cluster of small bombs, YC-200s. Like I said before, the optics are very good and the—”
“You bought a Chinese drone,” Luke said.
“Do you remember telling me to get a drone? I got one. I got what was available.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Uh… a couple of guys. They have, or maybe at one point had, some relationship with the Senegalese military. Look, why are we even talking about this?”
“How did you pay for it?”
“Well, Trudy’s got access to the SRT accounts, as you know. We transferred some money from an SRT bank account into Bitcoin, and then we moved that to one of the underground trading platforms, and then… you know how that goes.”
Luke shook his head. He felt like a sixth-grade teacher chatting with an eleven-year-old juvenile delinquent. “What do you plan to do with the thing that you bought, once this operation is over?”
“I’ll bring it back to the States. It’s a good drone, Luke. I think the SRT will get a lot of use out of it.”
“Swann, let me get this straight, okay? The Special Response Team, a small federal agency that reports directly to the President of the United States, is going to get a lot of use out of a black market Chinese drone that was stolen from the Senegalese military, and which we paid for with cryptocurrency on the dark web?”
Swann sighed. “Well, if you put it like that, it doesn’t sound great.”
Luke decided to change the subject. The current one was too depressing. “You’re our eyes up there tonight, Swann, and our muscle.”
“I know it,” Swann said.
“Keep us alive.”
“I always do.”
“And whatever you do, don’t bomb that tectonic weapon.”
“Good idea,” Swann said.
Luke hung up. Night had come in while he was on the phone. He looked at the chopper. The bags were all stowed. Ed and Dunn were already aboard. The pilot was still standing on the pad.
Luke walked up to him and offered a hand. The pilot shook it.
“Luke Stone.”
“Michael Penza. Call me Mike.”
“American?” Luke said.
The guy nodded and smiled. “Born and bred. My mom is from Spain, so I came over here to live for a while. I love it.”
“They said you were an Army pilot,” Luke said.
The guy’s face made a grimace. “I was in the Army at one point, but only for nine months. And I’m a pilot. Does that make me an Army pilot?”
“Nine months?” Luke said. “How’d you get out in only nine months?”
Penza shrugged. “I got an honorable discharge on the basis of unsuitability. You might think that means disobeying orders, but it really doesn’t. I just like to sleep late. They said I was too lazy, and the Army was better off without me. No argument here. I think we’re both better off.”
Penza moved around to the pilot’s side door, and Luke climbed into the front passenger seat. As he started up the chopper, Penza said:
“Where are we going, anyway?”
“Uh, we’re looking for something,” Luke said.
He was reluctant to tell the guy they were looking for a strange weapon that might be able to cause an earthquake, and a tsunami, and which had an atomic bomb embedded inside of it. And which was probably in the hands of Al-Qaeda militants. That seemed like a lot of information for one person to digest right away.
Of course, he would have to tell him at some point. Maybe he would just sound the guy out for a little while, see what kind of man he was. Lazy, apparently. And sleepy. Not necessarily the best attributes for a helicopter pilot.
Anyway, the weapon might not even be here. This whole trip could be a bust.
“We need to hang out in the triangle between La Gomera, La Palma, and El Hierro for a little while,” Luke said.
Penza nodded. “People request the strangest trips. Whatever you’re looking for, I doubt you’re going to find it. It’s going to be pretty dark over that water. But hey, you’re the customer.”
As the chopper lifted off, Penza glanced at Luke, Ed, and Dunn. “How about you guys? You ever spend any time in the military?”
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
1:31 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Situation Room
The White House, Washington, DC
“So we’re saying that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has an atomic bomb,” General Loomis said.
Susan sat in her customary seat. It infuriated her to look at Frank Loomis’s narrow weathered face, to listen to his voice. She was certain—no, almost certain—that he was the leaker. Once she became one hundred percent certain, he would never set foot in this room again.
But in the meantime, he did have a point. Al-Qaeda appeared to have done something that was long a dream of theirs—they had acquired the bomb. She hadn’t thought of it that way until just this moment.
She sipped her coffee. She had long ago lost track of how many cups she had ingested today. Her tongue felt like it had hair on it. Stone had described to her a drug that he and some of his team took to stay awake and alert when they were on missions—Dexedrine—some kind of upper, or speed. He had started taking it when he was in Delta Force, where it was practically in the training manual. She shook her head at the things the civilian leadership didn’t know.
She could use some of that drug right now. At least then she could stop drinking all this coffee. She couldn’t even taste it anymore.
Every plush leather seat at the table was already taken. The seats along the walls were full of young aides and assistants, every one of them quiet, serious, and behaving themselves, ready to carry out any order instantly. They had been exiled from the Promised Land earlier, and now they were back. They didn’t want to blow it.
“We believe they must not know what they have,” Kurt said. “If they knew there was an atomic bomb inside the tectonic weapon, we have to assume they would have used it by now. They’ve been in possession of the weapon for what appears to be an extended period of time. Why bother trying to cause an earthquake when you can raise a mushroom cloud over Paris?”
Loomis shook his head. “It was an incredibly irresponsible weapon to build, wouldn’t you say?”
Kurt’s bald head reflected light from the recessed lamps in the ceiling. He shrugged his big shoulders. “I don’t really have an opinion on it. The weapon was developed before the rise of nihilistic terror groups. I suppose the Russians—”
“But the Russians gave this weapon to a nihilistic terror group,” Loomis said. “Also, the nuclear safeguarding rules were long in place by then. You couldn’t build an atomic bomb in the 1980s without activation switches, and computer codes to activate with. It was against the agreed-upon rules. They broke the rules.”
Kurt smiled. It seemed like he would almost laugh. “Maybe that’s why they decided to scrap the system—because they realized it was against the rules. In any event, the Russians claim they don’t know how the weapon got loose. A lot of Soviet weaponry and nuclear materials were being looted in the early 1990s.”
“I want to point something out to you, Kurt, and to everyone in this room,” Loomis said. “I listened to a recording of this afternoon’s impromptu phone call with Vladimir Putin. And I’ve got a transcript right here. What I keep returning to again and again—I mean outside of the borderline treasonous niceties and playful banter between our President and theirs—”
“Get to your point, General,” Susan said. “We don’t have all day.”
Loomis nodded. “They told you that if the weapon were ever deployed, they would make sure to tell their enemies there was an easily detonated atomic bomb embedded inside of it. And that’s what they did. They deployed the weapon. And they advised their enemies of its capabilities. Now they’ve left us with the terrible choice they described. Bomb the weapon wh
ere it is, or let them use it to destroy the east coast of the United States.”
He looked around the room. His eyes were steely, predatory, like a hawk.
“I say we bomb it.”
There was a burst of chatter from everywhere at once.
Kurt clapped his hands, each clap like an atomic explosion.
CLAP. CLAP.
The room quieted down almost instantly.
“How many people are there in the Canary Islands?” Loomis said.
Kurt looked at Amy. She was ready with her tablet.
“A little over two million,” she said. “That doesn’t include tourists. This is the low season, but we can still assume a tourist population at this moment somewhere between two hundred thousand and half a million.”
Loomis looked at Susan. “The New York City metropolitan area has twenty-five million people all by itself. The real estate, and the infrastructure, is worth trillions of dollars. It is a worldwide financial capital, and a symbol of the United States of America. The ports in New Jersey are among the most important in the country.”
Susan stared at him. The man was a monster. The equations that he could calculate in his mind were inhuman. Left to her own devices, Susan would never even entertain these thoughts.
“General, I will not knowingly detonate an atomic bomb in a population center of over two million people, not in a territory controlled by our worst enemy, and definitely not in a territory controlled by a good friend of ours such as Spain.”
“Then you’re a fool,” Loomis said. “The Russians are on a war footing, did you know that? They’ve scrambled jets throughout their regions of influence, and they’ve put their missile defense on alert.”
Susan looked at Haley Lawrence. Haley had two aides sitting directly behind him. He leaned back, and one of them, a young woman, whispered something in his ear.
“We scrambled jets,” Haley said. “The Russians scrambled jets in response. Our planes are on patrol near the Canaries, along the coast of Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, and across to Cape Verde. They’re also crossing borders above the Sahara and the Sahel, in case the weapon turns up there. There are some sovereignty issues in play. A couple of the players involved are Russian client states. We’re stepping on toes and not really apologizing right now.”
