The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  The President cocked his head to one side and glowered at his intelligence chief. "'Medium yield', he finally intoned into the silence.

  "Yes, Sir. About ten or fifteen megs, we can't be sure at this time."

  The President stared at him. Finally, he slowly turned to look at Neel Conagher.

  "What will a...a ‘medium-yield, ten or fifteen meg’..." he almost spat the word ‘meg’..."nuclear bomb do to a city? Any city? This city, for example?" he asked his Secretary of the Navy. Conagher started to reply, then was dismayed to realize he didn't know.

  "Well, uh...it's a pretty...uh...complicated thing to...uh...to describe. I mean, it's..."

  Having never intended to be a participant, Lynn Thomas was as startled as anyone else when he heard his own voice.

  "Sir, as part of my oversight of nuclear forces, both...ah...surface and submarine fleets, I’m perhaps more aware of the effects of nuclear warfare than...some others might have been. If you have no objection...?"

  The President just managed to suppress a grin as the CNO delicately bailed his boss out of an embarrassing pinch.

  "Not at all, Admiral Thomas. Please do."

  "Well, Sir, I'm certainly no expert, as I'm sure others in this room are..."

  "I'm sure they'll stop you if you make a mistake," President Hardestey smiled. A soft chuckle made the rounds of the room.

  "Well," Admiral Lynn ‘Motormouth’ Thomas said, stalling as he searched for a beginning place that had the slightest semblance to organized thought, "as I recall from a quick stopover I made in Johannesburg several years ago, the terrain is fairly hilly, more so than here in D. C. That would affect the blast...the collateral damage...and the number of casualties. The fact that..."

  The President interrupted him by holding up one hand. Thomas's voice trailed off and his eyes went wide.

  "Do me a favor?"

  "Yes, Sir." He nodded for emphasis, not sure why he'd been stopped.

  Quietly, the President said, "Don't dance around it. Tell me what it's like. What it's...really...like." He eased back in his chair and made a steeple before his face with his fingers, almost as if he meant to pray. His eyes didn't waver from Thomas's.

  Lynn Thomas realized he was holding his breath. He let it out and took a slow breath, looking first at the plush carpet, then off into neutral space as he finally began, almost reverently, to speak.

  "First there's...nothing. Everything's normal. Maybe the sun's shining. Mothers are pushing their babies in the park. People are just...doing what they do. And then...completely out of nowhere...the world changes." He paused and there was total silence in the room. "There's a fireball, three miles wide. Everything...and I mean everything...for five miles in every direction is absolutely and utterly destroyed. For two miles beyond that, there's massive destruction. Eight to nine miles away, it looks like a hurricane came through. And beyond ten miles, the damage is minor...to property. The people, though...that's another thing altogether. Some bombs are clean, some are ‘dirty’...highly radioactive...and keep on killing people with aftereffects for years. The radioactive cloud, depending on wind and weather conditions, might top out at a hundred thousand feet altitude and contaminate an area downwind of five or even ten thousand square miles. A fifteen-megaton, direct hit on the White House would absolutely erase sixty percent of Washington, D. C. from the face of the earth. There wouldn't be a trace left. Another fifteen percent would be so badly damaged, all you could do is bulldoze it. If you could do it without frying your gene pool. The other ten to fifteen percent would be in various stages of damage, all the way out to the suburbs. And that's if the bomb was only ‘ten to fifteen megs’, as I believe it was put. That's D. C. I don't know about Johannesburg. Sir."

  The President stared at him, not moving. The room was totally quiet. Finally he cleared his throat.

  "How much of this is guesswork? George? Wiley?"

  Wiley Staunton shook his head. George Conrad realized he was the center of attention.

  "Well, it's...ah...ah, mostly conjecture. After all, we don't have any hard evidence except records that are almost seventy years old, since there have been only two actual incidents where nuclear force was used against real cities. And, after the ‘quake of oh-three, urban architecture changed radically so that buildings, new buildings, can withstand a lot more in the way of catastrophic assault. Of course, there've been hundreds, maybe thousands, of computer simulations utilizing realistic data bases of existing cities that yield fairly reliable models with high confidence levels."

  "Does that mean that we do or don't know the probable outcome of a nuclear explosion in a given city?"

  "Well...ah...to the degree that we're dealing with conjecture rather than actual experience, yes, Sir."

  "Was this city one of your computer models?"

  "Well, yes, Sir. In fact, there've been quite a few of Washington, considering it's the seat of government. And, of course," he added hurriedly, "the presence of your...I mean, of the President, here, as well would..." His voice trailed off.

  "Then there are guesstimates as to the effects of a nuclear bomb going off here, say, on the front lawn of the White House?"

  "Well..." the CIA chief seemed reluctant to reveal any of his precious secrets, "...yes. Sir. Yes, Sir. There are."

  "And what's their ‘confidence level’?"

  Conrad furtively glanced on either side of himself, but saw that he was alone. The others wouldn't even look at him. And those who did...Conagher, Thomas...didn't offer any solace. "The last figures I remember seeing indicated about...ninety-seven percent. Maybe higher."

  "Then is Admiral Thomas's scenario accurate?"

  "Well, Sir, that's hard to..."

  "With a ninety-seven percent confidence rate, it shouldn't be hard. Come on, Georgie, that's some pretty expensive toys we've been buying for you over there. Are they accurate or not? Is Lynn right or wrong? We are on the same side, aren't we?"

  George Conrad flushed and his nostrils flared, but then he remembered where he was and reigned in his notorious temper. He drew a deep breath and very deliberately exhaled. "Yes, Sir," he said in an even monotone. "I suppose Admiral Thomas's scenario is...reasonably accurate."

  The President nodded. "Um," he observed. "And Johannesburg?"

  "Probably about the same expectations, as far as real estate's concerned. Human casualties could be much higher."

  "Higher? Why?" Trevor Hardestey demanded.

  "The mines," Wiley Staunton jumped in. "At the time of day the bomb went off, there'd be literally thousands of men underground in the mines. They wouldn't stand a chance!"

  "And, too," Secretary of State Travis Carlyle interjected, "the last time I was down there, their architecture didn't look bomb-proof to me. They don't have the problem with earthquakes that, say, Japan does. Most of the ones they do have is in the neighborhood of four-point something on the Richter scale. The worst one they’ve had was, I believe, back in 1969. It was a 6.3. And a lot of that is believed by some to be due to the maze of mines underground. I doubt if their buildings, even those at some distance, could withstand that kind of force."

  "And that doesn't even begin to consider fallout...radiation...over the outlying areas," Carlyle added. "A lot of the people out in the rural areas of that part of Africa live in thatched huts with open windows. That sure won't do much for keeping a radioactive dust cloud at bay."

  The President looked down at his desk, briefly closed his eyes, and shook his head. Finally, he raised reddened eyes, sighed deeply and asked, "How many dead?" He looked from man to man.

  "At least three hundred thousand," Lynn Thomas said at last in a flat voice. He shrugged. "Probably a lot more, maybe...half-a-million? We'll never know. Not for sure. And that's just today. Tomorrow, or a week from now, there'll be another twenty or thirty thousand that don't make it. Then you've got the maimed...disabled...aborted fetuses...severely burned...people will be dying for months. And with that many corpses, animals too, within a few d
ays there'll probably be an explosion of every kind of disease you can think of. This is just the beginning." He fell silent.

  Trevor Hardesty got up from his desk and walked over to stare out at the bare trees on the White House lawn. A few stubborn leaves still trembled tenaciously here and there in the chill November wind. Those closest to him kept their seats, accustomed to his bent to pacing. The others took their cue and remained seated. He turned abruptly to face the group he'd assembled.

  "It seems to me that we have...several situations that need to be addressed simultaneously. First, we have a humanitarian responsibility to provide whatever aid is needed in South Africa as soon as we possibly can. Wiley, I want you to contact the South African embassy over on Massachusetts Avenue and find out what they need...if they know yet. Then get hold of our people here and get them moving on it. I want plane loads of supplies and equipment loaded and ready to fly as soon as it's safe to go in." The Foreign Affairs Minister was nodding and swiftly writing himself notes.

  "Travis, we need to issue statements in key places that'll help reassure our friends...and maybe keep some of the fringe element from making rash assumptions and doing something stupid. What about negotiations?'

  Carlyle was nodding before the President finished speaking. "We have a negotiating team on standby...Preston Taggert's heading that up. But..."

  "Negotiate?!" General Collins exploded. "I've got a ‘negotiatin' team’ hangin' under the wing of an SR-80 that'll clean out a nest o' terrorists and be back eatin' steak at th' officers' mess before the smoke clears! ‘Negotiate’, my Aunt Fanny!"

  "Thanks for that helpful word from the Air Force," the CIA director sarcastically muttered just loud enough to be heard.

  The sudden heated exchange that erupted reminded Lynn Thomas of old news footage of a night sky full of SCUD and Patriot missiles. He sank a little lower in his chair. If anybody was going to drop any hardware in any ocean, he fully intended it would fly off a carrier, not from some landlocked Air Force base. The oceans belonged to him and his people!

  Three sharp bell tones cut through the din. Startled, everyone looked for the source. The President stood behind his desk with a spoon from a nearby silver service in his hand, waiting. He laid down the spoon and took a sip of the glass of water he'd just tapped.

  "We're here to fight a common enemy, gentlemen, not each other. Anyone who feels he can't contribute something worthwhile to our purpose can wait in the outer office. Or his own office, for that matter." He looked deliberately at the cluster of faces. No one moved. "Good," he said dryly. "Then let's get on with it." Those who'd risen from their seats to do battle quickly regained them.

  "Now that we have some kind of humanitarian effort in motion to do what we can for the victims and survivors of this atrocity, it's time we addressed the cause of it. I want to know who's responsible for it, and why, and what we're going to do about it. Who's going to start?"

  Several seconds of silence was finally broken by his own press secretary, Marvin Walker. "Mr. President, I suppose it would be appropriate at this time to view a DVD that was apparently delivered within the last twenty-four hours to several news agencies, both here and abroad. One of those was CNN in Atlanta. It seems that they, and perhaps the BBC, were the only ones who took it seriously. At any rate, with your permission, I'll run the tape now." With a nod from Trevor Hardestey, Walker turned toward a ceiling-mounted video camera in the far back ‘corner’ of the Oval Office and also nodded. A technician in the Comm Center, watching for his cue, reached over and tapped "PLAY" on the console. The only existing copy of CNN's original tape of the broadcast, ending in detonation, had been flown in by military jet and delivered by armed couriers after the meeting under way had already begun. It now began to roll on the television set against the wall to the President's right. All heads turned to see and hear a bald, black man starkly bathed in a spot light.

  "Welcome, and thank you for joining me. You are about to witness a dramatic change in the history of the world. More dramatic, even, than the landing on Mars last year. They spoke to you by radio from a distant planet. But I wanted to do something a little different, so this broadcast is coming to you by satellite from beneath the Atlantic Ocean just..."

  The television was the only sound in the room and everyone sat mesmerized by the presence of this man they'd never seen before but would never forget. His eloquence and poise held them captive. Knowing the ending of the story didn't spoil the telling of it.

  Chapter 54

  At 05:00 the OOD of each ship in the convoy gave orders to close on the George Washington. The six ships fanned out on either side of the big carrier, respectively taking up positions in tight formation off her port and starboard bow, beam and quarter. Destroyers Spruance and Deyo took point, with the guided missile cruiser Yarnell and guided missile destroyer Kidd off her beam. The guided missile cruiser San Jacinto and guided missile frigate Doyle watched everybody else's backsides while in the tactically dangerous close formation. They all stayed out of the direct path of the huge nuclear powered carrier.

  At 06:00 each C.O. was sitting before a video speaker phone, sipping on a second cup of coffee, tea or hot cocoa. Each ship's communication gear had laser-locked onto the carrier's communications masthead. In order to maintain signal integrity, electronic tracking servos constantly compensated for roll, pitch and yaw, especially on smaller ships like the "tin cans" that were more susceptible to wave action. Like shooting skeet from a roller coaster, it would have been an impossible task without the computer software that had been developed to allow cameras to follow space shuttle launches years before.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, good morning," Admiral Cochran nodded pleasantly toward his vidcam. The four-by-four foot monitor before him was split into six sub-screens, each displaying head and shoulder images of his convoy's commanding officers. They all nodded or murmured acknowledgment.

  "I called you into a huddle, as I'm sure you're aware, so that we could shield our conversations. Though we're not actually engaged in a mission, I would prefer keeping our activities to ourselves." By capping signal strength to the equivalent two-mile radius of a college campus radio station and tight-beaming transmissions along focused laser paths to each ship, the scatter that might be intercepted by outside ears would be minimized. Further, the encryption translators aboard each ship that processed the digitally encoded signals made interception even less likely. Nevertheless, Jake Cochran didn't like anybody reading his ‘mail’.

  "As you know, we were diverted yesterday to render assistance to a civilian research submersible. As it turns out, the civilian who brought the ship up told a rather fantastic story about the original crew having been hijacked and kidnapped by...we suppose...terrorists of some kind. This civilian supposedly has some ties to the navy and was part of a team sent to help look for the ship. At least this much has been verified. We must assume, therefore, that his story, however strange, has some credibility. That being the case, the rest of the story is this: other civilians, under the direction of one Captain Marcus Justin, the billionaire sub driver, have gone looking for the ones who were supposedly abducted. I say 'supposedly' because, at this point, what we don't know 's got a strangle hold on what we do know."

  "Sir, excuse me. But, how exactly did anyone know where to go looking for the hostages?"

  Admiral Cochran looked at the middle screen of the second row on his monitor. The speaker was Captain Terri Fletcher, commanding officer of the destroyer DD963 Spruance. Slim, with short, dark hair and an easy smile, her eyes betrayed the intelligence that had sunk many a male ego.

  "First thing I asked, too, Terri. It's a big ocean." He smiled. "It seems the wicked witch has left a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest. In this case, it appears to lead to a place called Centinela Seamount. Anybody ever heard of it?" The answer was unanimous. "Neither had I. So we looked it up. It's a pimple on the Med's forehead. ‘Bout a hundred miles out from Gibraltar. Hundred feet down. Drops off to about eight th
ousand feet."

  "What's special about this seamount, sir?" Gary Freeland, C. O. of the Yarnell asked. "And why's a civilian chasing terrorists instead of us?"

  Cochran smiled and shook his head. "You got me. It's international waters. No landfall. Certainly no defensible position that I know of. All I know is, some clues were dropped that's supposed to mean that's where the hostages have been taken. Maybe they've anchored there, wired the ship with explosives, and are hoping for a standoff. I don't know. As to why we're not involved, the vessel that was allegedly hijacked was also allegedly civilian. Hence, the civilian posse."

  "Doesn't make sense, sir," chimed in Derrick Carr from the Doyle. "It's illogical. I certainly wouldn't leave all flanks exposed if I thought I was going to be shot at."

  "Tell me about it," the Admiral agreed. "The fact is, at this point, there aren't many facts. So, here's what we're gonna do. Our current orders are to make a port-of-call at Gibraltar. It just so happens," he said, ignoring the accompanying knowing smiles, "that our present course will take us right over this Centinela Seamount. At twenty knots, we'll be there in about eight hours. That makes it..." he looked at his watch, "...between two and three this afternoon. I intend to put a couple of Harriers over that spot after lunch for a quick look-see. Assuming they don't find anything, then as we pass over it, I want all ships in a search pattern, with an integrated grid of sonar mapping the bottom. I want redundant recording on all ships and I want real-time transmission to the computers in my plotting room here aboard the Washington. If there's anything unusual down there, I want to know it, and I want a ‘picture’ of it." He paused. "Anything I've forgotten?"

  "Sir," Captain Fletcher ventured, "since the Bergall was detached to escort the civilian vessel, and since this seamount is submerged, could we request another sub from the Med area be dispatched to assist us? Having underwater camera footage might prove to our advantage."