Deep Sound Channel

by Joe Buff

  "You're the expert, Ilse. What do we do?"

  "I don't see any lab notebooks either." More bullets clanged off the door and the TV

  monitor imploded.

  "Shaj," Jeffrey shouted—inside the lab his radio was jammed. "Shaj! We need to take a prisoner!"

  "Look for an older bald guy!" Ilse yelled at the top of her lungs. "I have a feeling he'll be in charge!"

  "Come on," Jeffrey said. He and Ilse dashed forward, pistols drawn. They passed two dead Boer soldiers, one with sergeant's stripes. They caught up with the SEALs.

  "No one else in sight," Clayton said. "We searched all the offices, and this whole wall's shielded. . . . The encapsulated diesel generator's over there."

  "Keep it running," Jeffrey said. "We need the power in the bunker." Ilse peered around. "They've wrecked every PC and took the laptops with them. They must have gone through the containment air lock."

  "Wouldn't they be killed?" Jeffrey said.

  "No," Ilse said. "This outer lock's a precaution. Up to level three's a shirt-sleeve environment. You only need space suits in BL-4."

  "How do we get this thing open?" Jeffrey said. Ilse worked the air lock.

  "Let's go," Jeffrey said. He yanked the handle of the

  inner door and pushed. The door gave a fraction and stopped. He put his shoulder to it. Nothing. "It's barricaded," he said.

  "The Halligan tools," Clayton said. SEAL Eight pulled two special crowbars from his pack. Eight and Clayton jammed the forked ends into the crack. Using all their strength, they forced the door open an inch, then lost their points of leverage.

  "Jaws," Clayton said. SEAL Nine handed him the tool. Nine worked the hydraulic foot pump while Clayton held the expanding tips to the jamb of the door. Jeffrey covered the opening from above Clayton's head while he worked, using Nine's weapon. Eight covered the opening from floor level, aiming between Clayton's legs. When there was enough clearance, Clayton dashed through. Again Ilse went last.

  A floor-to-ceiling freezer rested against the door. It was unplugged, but her visor told her everything inside was still frozen. The team was in an area of marble-topped lab benches, centrifuges, polymerase-chain-reaction machines. They double-checked under the tables—the area was clear. "Keep going!" Ilse shouted.

  The wall in front of them was shielded. They went through another door, with no barricade this time. Two men in white lab coats turned to face them, unarmed. Four others fed diskettes and papers into fires blazing in the exhaust hoods of biosafety three. SEALs Eight and Nine made them move aside.

  "Save whatever you can," Jeffrey said. Eight and Nine closed the hoods to smother the fires.

  In the middle of one wall was another air lock, much

  heavier and with a different mechanism. A big red 4 was

  painted on the hatch. Jeffrey looked through the porthole.

  "Someone's in there," Jeffrey said. "He's putting on a suit."

  "He'll try to lock himself in," Ilse said, "then wait until we leave. Let me get this thing open." She peeked through the porthole, then worked the door mechanism and yanked the handle. Suction fans began to roar.

  The bald man took hold of the inner door. "Get back or I'll open it."

  "You can't," Ilse said, "not while this one's ajar. The interlocking won't let you." The Boer turned. "You," he said, staring at her. He held the space-suit hood under one arm.

  "Otto," Ilse said, covering him with her gun. "I somehow knew you'd be behind all this." The man grabbed a ring hung by a chain from the ceiling and pulled. Nothing happened.

  "Come on, Otto," Ilse said, "use your head. The alkali hot bath won't work now either. . .

  . Or do you use liquid nitrogen?"

  "How did you get here?" Otto snapped. "Who did you come with, the Special Air Service? A parachute drop on the airstrip?"

  "No," Ilse said as Jeffrey and Clayton came up behind her. "U.S. Navy SEALs."

  "I should have known," Otto said, dripping venom. "You always were too close to American culture." "Come out of the air lock," Ilse said.

  "No," Otto said. "You'll have to kill me first."

  "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Ilse said. "Another martyr for the cause, and all your secrets die with you. . . . Not a chance."

  Jeffrey and Clayton went past Ilse and grabbed Otto by the arms. He struggled, but Nine moved in and gave him a shot of morphine in the neck.

  "You filthy sons of bitches," Otto cursed. "You racially polluted scum!" He looked right at Ilse. "You miscegenating whore! I'll tell you nothing!" His voice was already slurred, his eyelids drooping.

  "No, Otto," Ilse said, patting him on the shoulder as he slumped to the floor. She gave him a great big smile.

  "You don't know U.S. Naval Intelligence. They have ways to make men talk."

  "Commander, Ilse, check this out," SEAL Eight said. He was still covering the other prisoners with his machine pistol. Jeffrey and Ilse came over. Eight pointed to another TV monitor and VCR.

  "It's a kid," Jeffrey said. "He's having convulsions." "The archaea," Ilse said. "This must be what they were watching."

  "Get the tape," Jeffrey said. "At least we'll have it as data."

  "Wait a minute," Ilse said. "It's on record, not play. This is live feed we're seeing."

  "It's happening now?" Jeffrey said.

  Ilse turned to the air lock. "Somewhere in there."

  SEAL Eight handed Ilse a partly burned research diary, then did a radar scan through the wall. "Yeah," Eight said, "in there. No one else, he's alone." Ilse eyed the pages, the binding scorched and still warm through her flameproof gloves. Base gene sequencing homology, initiation codons GUG, UUG, CUG, and so on. Grams dry weight per mol-hour culture growth rates, and substrate uptake kinetics.

  "Isn't there something we can do?" Clayton said, staring at the monitor.

  "Nothing that would save him," Ilse said. "See the way his face looks melted, how his limbs flop? He's lost all muscle tone. The infection's far advanced."

  "Can't we . ," Jeffrey said. He had to clear his throat. "Can't we go in and help him? You know, a morphine overdose, anything?"

  "The procedures to get in there safely," Ilse said, "the decontamination afterward . . ." The child was shivering and writhing, more like a rubber dummy than a human. Pink foam oozed from his

  mouth, and his chest heaved erratically. He made animal grunting sounds that came over the speakers in stereo.

  "Christ," Jeffrey said, "his eyeballs keep jerking in different directions. They aren't even in sync."

  "He's in some kind of inner chamber," Ilse said. "Look." The child was strapped to a bare metal gurney, under robotic grapnels hung from the ceiling. He soiled himself once more and the upper-intestinal effluent dripped to the floor. There was a sump in the white tile floor, in one corner next to autopsy tools—

  hoses, saws and knives, retractors. Beside them were the mechanical hands and thick viewport of a glove box.

  "It makes sense," Ilse said, "a higher biosafety zone past BL-4. Biosafety level five."

  "We just have to watch this?" Jeffrey said.

  "What do you want me to do?" Ilse snapped. "Suit up and go through the air lock, move the stretcher to the waldoes with the grapnels, then reach in and grab a scalpel and cut his throat? He can't last long now anyway."

  Electrodes were taped to the boy's forehead and over his heart. Ilse ransacked the level three work area near the monitor, trying to find the readouts. She gasped when she saw his EEG traces—his brain waves were wild, chaotic and jagged.

  As Ilse flipped through more research papers, Clayton turned to the prisoners. "Did you do this to him?"

  No one answered.

  "Did you do this to him?" Clayton screamed.

  "He told us to," one Boer said, pointing to Otto asleep

  on the floor. "The whole project was his idea." "They threatened our families," another pleaded. "Did they?" Ilse said. She'd seen enough in the notebooks. "I don't believe you, any of you. You all look
too well fed, too pleased with yourselves. You were burning the records too eagerly." The way their posture slumped showed she was right. "You're all guilty of war crimes." None of the Boers spoke.

  "What do we do with them now?" Clayton said.

  There was a gurgling scream from the monitor. The child had chewed through his tongue. Blood spurted from his mouth—he was drowning in it, and his skin was gray, not brown. His eyebrows and jaw worked violently and his lips and nostrils flared and spasmed, a caricature of someone making silly faces. He couldn't be more than ten.

  "Commander Fuller," Ilse said. "These notes clearly document systematic efforts to genetically engineer a lethal strain of archaea. Successful efforts. Are you satisfied by what you see? Have the rules of engagement been met?"

  "Yes," Jeffrey said quietly.

  An electronic tone sounded. Ilse looked at the monitor. The child lay totally still. Ilse glanced at the life signs equipment. His electrocardiogram was flat. Ilse turned to the enemy scientists. "This is for him and my brother." She opened fire at the Boers, shooting each of them twice in the head.

  INSIDE THE MISSILE BUNKER

  Jeffrey watched as Clayton studied the South African nuclear physics package. Clayton used a handheld fluoroscope and an ultrasound probe, leaning over the access hatch near the front end of the missile. SEAL Eight took pictures with a digital camera and took notes for Clayton. Clayton's instruments were hooked up to a laptop they'd brought with them, kept a safe distance from the fluoroscope emitter. Imagery flickered on the laptop screen.

  "This the first enemy warhead you've ever seen?" Jeffrey said. He had to bend his head down while he stood, because of the low bare concrete overhead in the bunker.

  "This is the first one anybody's seen," Clayton said, "so far as I know. Okay, here we go.

  . . . One sophisticated design. Compact, lightweight, uses very little fissile material. Eight, write this down in case the laptop's damaged later."

  Jeffrey saw Clayton glance again at SEAL One, being ministered to by SEAL Two and Ilse at the other end of the bunker. "Commander," Clayton said, "you pay close attention also. In case I don't make it back."

  "Understood," Jeffrey said.

  Clayton cleared his throat. "The active ingredient,

  the fissile material, is a seven-centimeter hollow sphere of uranium 235." He ran some calculations. "That would weigh five kilograms."

  "That's all?" Jeffrey said.

  "This design achieves critical mass by density compression."

  "What's the fuel enrichment?" Jeffrey said.

  Clayton eyed a special radiac. "Ninety-three percent." "That's high," Jeffrey said.

  "Higher's more efficient."

  "Did we guess right, three KT?"

  "I'll tell you in a minute," Clayton said.

  Jeffrey glanced at the laptop screen. He saw the different warhead layers: initiator at the very core, tamper, shock buffers, neutron reflector. "What's this shading here, around the edges of the image?"

  "The next layer out," Clayton said, "a coating of boron. That's to stop stray neutrons on the atomic battlefield, prevent a fizzle from predetonation."

  "Okay," Jeffrey said, "which is one problem you don't have underwater. H20 blocks neutrons." Jeffrey eyed the sonogram. "Now comes the firing system, outside the boron."

  "Yup. . . . Again, ultrasophisticated. The inner portion's a fast-detonating high explosive, surrounded by slower-detonating hollow cones, with foil slappers at the apex of each cone, wired to the krytrons."

  "The krytrons are what give perfect simultaneous ignition at all the apexes," Jeffrey said.

  "Correct. The firing current vaporizes the metal foil, like when a house fuse blows. Each slapper functions as a tiny rifle."

  "The explosion wave moves down the cones," Jeffrey said, "the wave fronts turn convex, and you have a broad base of ignition for the secondary charge."

  "You got it, Commander," Clayton said. "That gives

  you a nice implosion wave. . . . This baby should yield four kilotons."

  "That'll do the job quite well," Jeffrey said. It occurred to him it would also really do the job on an Allied amphibious ready group and its thousands of marines. Ilse came over and looked at the bomb. She had blood on her gloves.

  "The whole thing sounds too elegant," Jeffrey said.

  "It is," Clayton said. "This is how our own new A-bombs work. From what we can tell here the Axis isn't lagging any. And remember, a fission weapon can yield up to a megaton, using multiple critical masses."

  "You're kidding," Ilse said.

  "Our boomer fleet's own H-bombs only yield some three hundred kilotons," Jeffrey said.

  "Okay, folks," Clayton said, "intel briefing's over. Time to cut the wires into the krytrons.

  ',

  "How many krytrons are there?" Ilse said. "Ninety-two." SEAL Two glanced up from tending his mortally wounded comrade. "Commander, hand me another plasma pack. This one's empty and we need to get his BP higher." Jeffrey fiddled in his bag and pulled out the blood extender.

  He handed it to Two, then crouched next to SEAL One. "How you feeling?" Jeffrey said. SEAL One took the oxygen mask from his face. "Hurts like hell at the base of my spine, can't feel a damn thing lower down." He was pale and sweaty.

  "You still cold? Want another jacket?"

  "No. Thanks. This gillie suit's good for treating shock. . . . But it's awful stuffy in here, and I'm choking from the stink."

  Jeffrey turned up the bunker's ventilation.

  "And get this bald asshole away from me," SEAL One said. "Sleeping Beauty here." He made a face at Otto, still out cold. Jeffrey dragged the prisoner to the far corner, none too gently, and left him by the two dead Boer soldiers. Otto started snoring. Jeffrey went back to SEAL One, then made eye contact with Two, saying quietly, "You'

  re sure there's no way we can take One back with us?"

  Two shook his head. "Moving him's out of the question. The dolphin ride would flex his pelvis constantly. You saw the fluoroscope: he's got secondary projectiles all through his lower GI tract. He'd bleed out in no time."

  "What if we just towed his SDV?" Jeffrey said.

  "We still have four klicks on foot through the rough to get back to the river . . . if we don'

  t hit more patrols and helos."

  "Then how about this?" Jeffrey said. "New egress plan." Clayton turned to listen, a wiring crimper and dental mirror in his hands. "We change to Boer uniforms and use that truck out front," Jeffrey said. "We go right down the main drag through Umhlanga Rocks like we own the place. We ditch the truck inside the nature reserve." SEAL Two shook his head again. "The surf and wave action would be fatal, not to mention going on a Draeger in his condition. Commander, the underwater pressure would send blood clots to his lungs, his heart, his brain. . . ."

  "Leaving the truck in the reserve would give them a clue," Clayton said. "And if we were stopped along the way, it would all be over."

  "They'll have roadblocks," Ilse said. "And they invented paranoia."

  "You're right," Jeffrey said. "It's not about any of us escaping safely. The key is the enemy can't know we were ever here, so they'll believe this thing was internal sabotage."

  "Guys," One said. "Cut it out. I'm dying, okay? I can deal with that. It comes with the job sometimes."

  "We never leave a man behind," Jeffrey said. "Never." "It'll be a cremation," SEAL One said. "Yeah, a cremation in place, a nuclear cremation."

  Jeffrey looked at One, so young to die and yet so chipper. Tears came to Jeffrey's eyes. This static phase of the mission was turning into one big mood crash for him, hiding out and working on the bomb. Ilse seemed to use her rage, barely slaked, to deal with it. That, and the immediacy of helping treat SEAL One, seemed to keep her from the depression Jeffrey felt come on.

  "I can do something useful," One said. "I can guard the bomb after you leave."

  "That's true," Jeffrey said. He took One's hand. "It could make the difference. . . . Hey
, Shaj, can you rig up some kind of switch? You know, to set off the bomb right away, in case of enemy interference?"

  "Not a problem," Clayton said.

  "How much time you figure I got left?" One asked Two.

  "You'll be alert for long enough."

  "Just try not to sneeze or something," Jeffrey said, "and hit the switch by accident before we're out of range."

  One laughed, despite the pain. "Bring the chief's body in here. He deserves decent burial too, and I don't want to die alone."

  "Six, Nine," Ilse heard in her helmet. She knew SEAL Nine was the downhill perimeter security guard. "Nine, g'head," Clayton said.

  "Trouble, boss. We got company."

  "What is it?" Clayton said. Ilse reached for the butt of her pistol. The weapon was cooler than before. "A runner," SEAL Nine said, "some kind of messenger. Must have been sent up 'cause they lost contact in the village."

  "Nine, Four," Jeffrey said, "does he have a radio?" "Affirmative. I can hear it. He's turned it up to monitor the traffic."

  Clayton turned to Jeffrey. "We better take him out." "Let's hope he isn't wearing a life signs monitor alarm," Jeffrey said.

  "Yeah," Clayton said. "None of the other soldiers

  were."

  "Nine, Four," Jeffrey said, "take out the runner." "Four, Nine, understood." There was silence on the circuit, then Ilse heard Nine say "Shit." There was heavy breathing on her headphones, grunting in two different voices, and the sounds of snapping branches.

  "Crap," Jeffrey said. He took off out of the bunker with his fighting dagger in his hand and a frightening expression on his face—eagerness.

  As Jeffrey topped the steps, Ilse heard a meaty thud

  over the radio, more grunting, then a gurgling moan. "Nine, Six," Clayton hissed. "Nine, Six, come in." No response.

  "Nine, Six. Nine, Six."

  Then Ilse heard a shuffling sound on the radio, more thuds and thumps and grunting, a tearing noise, then a drawn-out exhalation that ended in a rattling sigh.

  "Four, Six," Clayton called. "Four, Six." Nothing. Ilse sat up anxiously.

  "Six, Four," Jeffrey called. Jeffrey sounded winded. Ilse relaxed a little—he was okay.

  "Four, Six, g'head," Clayton said.