by Tom Clancy
A NESTer flipped to the index, then back to a page. “It's close! Close! Say the gadolinium again!”
“Zero point zero five eight times ten to the minus 7, plus or minus point zero zero two.”
“Holy Mary Mother of God!” The man turned the book around.
“ Savannah River… That's not possible…”
“1968, it was a vintage year. It's our stuff. It's our fucking plutonium.”
The senior NESTer blinked his disbelief away. “Okay, let me call D.C.”
“Can't,” the technician said as he refined his readings. “The long-distance lines are all down.”
“Where's Larry?”
“Aurora Presbyterian, working with the FBI guys. I put the number on a post-it over the phone in the corner. I think he's working D.C. through them.”
* * *
“ Murray.”
“Hoskins, I just heard from Rocky Flats. Dan, this sounds nuts: the NEST team says the weapon used American plutonium. I asked him to confirm it, and he did — said he asked the same thing. The plutonium came from the DOE plant at Savannah River, turned out in February 1968, K Reactor. They have chapter and verse, he says they can even tell you what part of K Reactor — sounds like bullshit to me, too, but he's the friggin' expert.”
“Walt, how the hell am I going to get anybody to believe that?”
“Dan, that's what the man told me.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“The phone lines are down, remember. I can get him in here in a few minutes.”
“Do that, and do it fast.”
* * *
“Yeah, Dan?”
“Jack, the NEST team just reported into our Denver office. The material in the bomb was American.”
“What?”
“Listen, Jack, we've all said that, okay? The NEST team got fallout samples and analyzed them, and they say the uranium — no, plutonium — came from Savannah River, 1968. I have the NESTer team leader coming in to the Denver Field Division now. The long-distance lines are down, but I can patch through our system and you can talk to him directly.”
Ryan looked at the Science and Technology officer. “Tell me what you think.”
“ Savannah River, they've had problems there, like a thousand pound MUF.”
“Muff?”
“M-U-F, acronym: material unaccounted for. Lost material.”
“Terrorists,” Ryan said positively.
“Starting to make sense,” S&T agreed.
“Oh, God, and he won't listen to me now!” Well, there was still Durling.
* * *
“That's hard to believe,” the Vice President said.
“Sir, it's hard data, checked by the NEST team at Rocky Flats, it's hard, scientific data. It may sound nuts, but it's objective fact.” I hope, oh God, I hope. Durling could hear Ryan thinking it. “Sir, this was definitely not a Russian weapon — that's the important thing. We are certain it was not a Soviet weapon. Tell the President right now!”
“Will do.” Durling nodded to the Air Force communications sergeant.
* * *
“Yes, Roger,” the President said.
“Sir, we've just received some important information.”
“What now?” the President sounded tired unto death.
“It came to me from CIA, but they got it from the FBI. The NEST team has identified the bomb material as definitely not Russian. They think the bomb material is American.”
“That is crazy!” Borstein announced. “We do not have any missing weapons. We take damned good care of those things!”
“Roger, you got that from Ryan, didn't you?”
“Yes, Bob, I did.”
Durling heard a long sigh over the line. “Thank you.”
The Vice President's hand trembled as he lifted the other phone. “He didn't buy it.”
* * *
“He's got to buy it, sir, it's true!”
“I'm out of ideas here. You were right, Jack, he's not listening to anyone now.”
“New Hot Line message, sir.”
P RESIDENT NARMONOV, Jack read:
YOU ACCUSE ME OF IRRATIONALITY. WE HAVE TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DEAD, AN ATTACK ON OUR FORCES IN BERLIN, AN ATTACK ON OUR NAVY BOTH IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE PACIFIC…
“He's close to doing it. God damn it! We've got the information he needs to stop this thing in its tracks and—”
“I'm out of ideas,” Durling said over the speaker-phone. “These damned messages over the Hot Line are making things worse instead of better, and—”
“That seems to be the key problem, doesn't it?” Ryan looked up. “Ben, you good driving in snow?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Come on!” Ryan raced out of the room. They caught an elevator to the first floor, Jack ran into the security room. “Keys to the car!”
“Here, sir!” A very frightened young man tossed them over. The CIA's security force kept its vehicles just off the VIP lot. The blue GMC Jimmy four-wheel-drive was unlocked.
“Where are we going?” Goodley asked as he got into the driver's-side door.
“Pentagon, River entrance, and get us there fast.”
* * *
“What was it?” The torpedo had circled something, but not exploded, and finally ran out of fuel.
“Not enough mass to set off the magnetic exploder — too small to hit directly… must have been a decoy,” Dubinin said. “Where's that original intercept?” A sailor handed it over. “'Propeller disabled by collision,' Goddamn it! We were tracking a bad power plant, not a damaged screw.” The captain smashed his fist down on the chart table hard enough to draw blood. “Come north, go active!”
* * *
“Oh, shit, conn, sonar, we have an active low-frequency sonar bearing one-nine-zero.”
“Warm up the weapons!”
“Sir, if we deploy the outboard, we'll get another two or three knots,” Claggett said.
“Too noisy!” Ricks snapped back.
“Sir, we're up in the surface noise. The high-freqs from the outboard motor won't matter much up here. His active sonar is low-freq, and that active stuff's liable to detect us whether we're noisy or not. What we need now is distance, sir, if he gets too close, the Orion can't engage to support us.”
“We have to take him out.”
“Bad move, sir. We're on SNAPCOUNT status now, if we have to shoot, that takes priority. Putting a unit in the water will tell us just where to look. Captain, we need distance to keep out of his active sonar, and we can't risk a shot.”
“No!” Weapons officer, set it up!"
“Aye, sir.”
“Communications, tell the Orion to get us some help!”
* * *
“Here's the last one, Colonel.”
“Well, that was fast enough,” the regimental commander said.
“The boys are getting lots of practice,” the Major standing next to him observed, as the tenth and final RV was lifted off the SS-18 at Alyesk. “Be careful there, Sergeant.”
It was ice that did it. A few minutes earlier, some snow had blown into the missile capsule. The shuffling of boots had crushed and melted it, but then the sub-zero temperatures had refrozen it into an invisible, paper-thin skim of ice. The sergeant was in the process of stepping back off the fold-down catwalk when he slipped, and his wrench went flying. It bounced off the railing, twirling like a baton for a moment. The sergeant grabbed for it, but missed, and it went down.
“Run!” the Colonel screamed. The sergeant needed no encouragement. The corporal on the crane swung the warhead clear and himself jumped from the vehicle. They all knew to go upwind.
The wrench nearly made it all the way down, but it struck an interior fitting and went sideways, gouging the skin of the first stage in two places. The missile skin was also the missile tankage, and both the fuel and oxidizer were released. The two chemicals formed small clouds — only a few grams of each were leaking — but the chemicals were hypergolic. They ignited
on contact. That happened two minutes after the wrench began its fall.
The explosion was a powerful one. It knocked the Colonel down, over two hundred meters from the silo. He instinctively rolled behind a thick pine-tree as the crushing overpressure wave swept by. He looked a moment later to see the silo topped by a pillar of flame. His men had all made it — a miracle, he thought. His next thought reflected the humor that so often accompanies an escape from death: Well, that's one less missile for the Americans to bother us about!
* * *
The Defense Support Program Satellite already had its sensor focused on the Russian missile fields. The energy bloom was unmistakable. The signal was down-linked to Alice Springs in Australia, and from there back up to a USAF communications satellite, which relayed it to North America. It took just over half a second.
“Possible launch — possible launch at Alyesk!”
In that moment, everything changed for Major General Joe Borstein. His eyes focused on the real-time display and his first thought was that it had happened, despite everything, all the changes, all the progress, all the treaties, somehow it had happened, and he was watching it and he would be there to watch it all happen until the SS-18 with his name on it landed on Cheyenne Mountain… This wasn't dropping bombs on the Paul Doumer Bridge, or hassling fighters over Germany. This was the end of life.
Borstein's voice was the sound of sandpaper. “I only see one… where's the bird?”
“No bird no bird no bird,” a female captain announced. “The boom is too big, more like an explosion. No bird, no bird. This is not a launch, I repeat this is not a launch.”
Borstein saw that his hands were shaking. They hadn't done that the time he'd been shot down, nor the time he'd crashed at Edwards, nor the times he'd driven airplanes through weather too foul for hailstones. He looked around at his people and saw in their faces the same thing he'd just felt in the pit of his stomach. Somehow it had been like watching a dreadfully scary movie to this point, but it was not a movie now. He lifted the phone to SAC and switched off the input to the Gold Phone line to Camp David.
“Pete, did you copy that?”
“I sure did, Joe.”
“We, uh, we better settle this thing down, Pete. The President's losing it.”
CINC-SAC paused for a beat before responding. “I almost lost it, but I just got it back.”
“Yeah, I hear you, Pete.”
“What the hell was that?”
Borstein flipped the switch back on. “Mr. President, that was an explosion, we think, in the Alyesk missile fields. We, uh, sure had a scare there for a moment, but there is no bird in the air — say again, Mr. President, there are no birds flying now. That was a definite false alarm.”
“What does it mean?”
“Sir, I do not know that. Perhaps — they were servicing the missiles, sir, and maybe they had an accident. It's happened before — we had the same problem with the Titan-II.”
“General Borstein is correct,” CINC-SAC confirmed soberly. “That's why we got rid of the Titan-II… Mr. President?”
“Yes, General?”
“Sir, I recommend we try to cool things down some more, sir.”
“And just how do we do that?” Fowler wanted to know. “What if that was related to their alert activity?”
* * *
The ride down the George Washington Parkway was uneventful. Though covered with snow, Goodley had maintained a steady forty miles per hour in four-wheel-drive, and not lost control once, getting around abandoned cars like a race-car driver at Daytona. He pulled into the River/Mall entrance to the Pentagon. The civilian guard there was backed up by a soldier now, whose M-16 rifle was undoubtedly loaded.
“CIA!” Goodley said.
“Wait.” Ryan handed over his badge. “In the slot. I think it'll work here.”
Goodley did as he was told. Ryan's high-level badge had the right electronic code for this security device. The gate went up, and the road barrier went down, clearing the way. The soldier nodded. If the pass worked, every thing had to be okay, right?
“Right up to the first set of doors.”
“Park it?”
“Leave it! You come in with me.”
Security inside the River Entrance was also beefed up. Jack tried to pass through the metal detector, but was stopped by pocket change that he then threw on the floor in a rage. “NMCC?”
“Come with me, sir.”
The entrance to the National Military Command Center was barred by a wall of bullet-resistant glass, behind which was a black female sergeant armed with a revolver.
“CIA, I have to get in.” Ryan held his badge against the black pad, and again it worked.
“Who are you, sir?” a Navy petty officer asked.
“DDCI. You take me to whoever's running this.”
“Follow me, sir. The man you want to see is Captain Rosselli.”
“Captain? No flag officer?”
“General Wilkes got lost, sir, we don't know where the hell he is.” The enlisted man turned through a door.
Ryan saw a Navy captain and an Air Force lieutenant-colonel, a status board, and a gang of multiple-line phones. “You Rosselli?”
“That's right, and you?”
“Jack Ryan, DDCI.”
“You picked a bad place to come to, pal,” Colonel Barnes observed.
“Anything changed?”
“Well, we just had what looked like a missile launch in Russia —”
“Jesus!”
“No bird came up, maybe an explosion in the hole. You have anything we need to know?”
“I need a line into the FBI command center, and I need to talk to both of you.”
“That's crazy,” Rosselli said, two minutes later.
“Maybe so.” Ryan lifted the line. “Dan, Jack here.”
“Where the hell are you, Jack? I just called Langley.”
“Pentagon. What do you have on the bomb?”
“Stand by, I have a patch through to Dr. Larry Parsons. He's the NEST boss. He's on now.”
“Okay, this is Ryan, Deputy Director of CIA. Talk to me.”
“The bomb was made of American plutonium. That's definite. They've rechecked the sample four times. Savannah River Plant, February 1968, K Reactor.”
“You're sure?” Jack asked, wishing very hard that the answer would be affirmative.
“Positive, crazy as it sounds, it was our stuff.”
“What else?”
“ Murray tells me you have had problems with the yield estimate. Okay, I've been there, okay? This was a small device, less than fifteen — that's one-five — kiloton yield. There are survivors from the scene — not many, but I've seen them myself, okay? I'm not sure what screwed up the initial estimate, but I have been there and I'm telling you it was a little one. It also seems to have been a fizzle. We're trying to ascertain more about that now — but this is the important part, okay? The bomb material was definitely American in origin. One hundred percent sure.”
Rosselli leaned over to make sure that this phone line was a secure one into FBI headquarters. “Wait a minute. Sir, this is Captain Jim Rosselli, U.S. Navy. I have a masters in nuclear physics. Just to make sure this is what I'm hearing, I want you to give me the 239/240 proportions, okay?”
“Wait a minute and I will… Okay, 239 was nine eight point nine three, 240 is zero point four five. You want the trace elements also?”
“No, that'll do it. Thank you, sir.” Rosselli looked up and spoke quietly. “Either he's telling the truth or he's one smart fuckin' liar.”
“Captain, I'm glad you agree. I need you to do something.”
“What's that?”
“I need to get on the Hot Line.”
“I can't allow that.”
“Captain, have you been keeping track of the messages?”
“No, Rocky and I haven't had time. We've got three separate battles going on and—”
“Let's go look.”
Ryan hadn't b
een in there before, which struck him as odd. The printed copies of the messages were being kept on a clipboard. There were six people in the room, and they all looked ashen.
“Christ, Ernie—” Rosselli observed.
“Anything lately?” Jack asked.
“Nothing since the President sent one out twenty minutes ago.”
“It was going fine when I was here right after — oh, my God…” Rosselli observed as he got to the bottom.
“The President has lost it,” Jack said. “He refuses to take information from me, and he refuses to listen to Vice President Durling. Now, this is real simple, okay? I know President Narmonov. He knows me. With what the FBI just gave us, what you just heard, Captain, I think I might be able to accomplish something. If not—”
“Sir, that is not possible,” Rosselli replied.
“Why?” Jack asked. Though his heart was racing, he forced himself to control his breathing. He had to be cool be cool be cool now.
“Sir, the whole point of this link is that the only two people on it are—”
“One of them, maybe both now, is not playing with a full deck. Captain, you can see where we are. I can't force you to do this. I'm asking you to think. You just used your head a moment ago. Use it again,” Ryan said calmly.
“Sir, they'll lock us up for doing this,” the Link supervisor said.
“You have to be alive to be locked up,” Jack said. “We are at SNAPCOUNT right now. You people know how serious this is. Captain Rosselli, you are the senior officer present, and you make the call.”
“I see everything you put on that machine before it's transmitted.”
“Fair enough. Can I type it myself?”
“Yes. You type, and it's crossloaded and encrypted before it goes out.”
A Marine sergeant made room for him. Jack sat down and lit a cigarette, ignoring the signs prohibiting the vice.
ANDREY IL'YCH, Ryan tapped in slowly, THIS IS JACK RYAN. DO YOU STILL MAKE YOUR OWN FIRES IN THE DACHA?
“Okay?”
Rosselli nodded to the NCO sitting next to Ryan. “Transmit.”
* * *
“What is this?” the Defense Minister asked. Four men hovered over the terminal. A Soviet Army major translated.
