“Like a suitcase nuke?”
“Possibly.”
“Thanks. Keep me updated.”
Bill ran out of the office and barged into a meeting of Ray’s. “Li called with another spike” was all he had to say to get Ray’s full attention.
“My God, where?”
Six minutes later, Hiccock, Reynolds, and the President were being briefed by the Secretary of the Navy.
“The Nimitz Class carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, CVN 71, went to Force Protection level at 0600 zulu and hailed two zodiac-type craft from nearing. After a warning shot was fired and the boats failed to alter course, the main batteries opened up. Both boats were immediately sunk. At that instant, the nuclear alarms tripped and the boat went into nuclear-safe lockdown.”
“Are the men all right?” the President asked.
“All who were on the deck are going through standard de-con, right now. Time will tell.”
“Mr. Secretary, was there a secondary explosion?” Hiccock asked.
“I don’t have that detail yet.”
“Bill, what are you thinking?”
“Sir, our intercept said, Roosevelt. I certainly never thought of the aircraft carrier, Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Intercept?” the SECNAV asked.
“NSA found two words in a message. One was the name of the safe house where the suitcase nukes were stored and the other was Roosevelt. I am sorry I didn’t think of the ship, Mr. Secretary.”
“Doesn’t matter, Mr. Hiccock. The ‘Big Stick’ was already on war watch. They couldn’t have been more prepared if you had a telegram with the exact date and time. But I see now why you asked about the secondary detonation.” The Secretary turned to the President as he gestured to the phone. “May I?”
“Of course.”
As the SECNAV got the commander of the TR on the phone, Hiccock thought about the fact that everything could be over. The loose suitcase nuke could now be at the bottom of the sea. It had to be or the commander of the ship wouldn’t answer the phone because he, his 97,000-ton warship, and its whole Carrier Strike Group, would be vaporized.
“Go ahead, Commander Halbrook, I have you on speaker with the President, the COS and Sci Ad.”
“As far as we can tell there was no nuclear detonation. There was, however, a nuclear event.”
“This is Hiccock. The boats went down to direct hits, commander?”
“Yes. In all, 10 shells were fired along with two ‘sea whiz’ systems on manual.”
“This is the President. Any idea who attacked you?”
“No sir. They disappeared in a blue-white flash, sir.”
“Good shooting, commander.” The president actually pumped his fist as the ex-combat fighter pilot in him responded to the neutralized threat.
“Sir, we train hard for this type of thing. I’ve got a cool, effective crew here, sir.”
“Commander, it’s Hiccock again. You did say CWIS, didn’t you?”
“Yes, two of our Phalanx systems open up in addition to the five-inchers.”
“Is that important, Bill?”
“Could be, sir. Those systems fire depleted uranium bullets. Commander, could the sea whiz have accounted for tripping the nuclear alarms?”
“Highly doubtful, Mr. Hiccock. One, they are truly depleted and two, our sensors are calibrated to take our own reactor and weapons like that out of the equation.”
“Commander, do you think you sunk a boat with a suitcase nuke on board?” Ray asked, summing up the whole reason for this call.
“Indeterminate, sir. Something set off the sensors and I guess a breached or destroyed suitcase nuke would let out a spike like that. I can tell you that the area remains hot and we are tracking a line of radiation down to the ocean floor.”
“How deep is the water there, Commander?”
“Pretty deep, sir. At least three miles.”
“So we couldn’t recover it even if we could get close enough to the radiation,” the President guessed.
“Yes sir. I am afraid whatever it is, is going to be down there for good.”
The President looked around the room. “Anything else?” When no one answered, he said, “Again, job well done, commander. My commendation and gratitude to you and your crew.”
“Thank you, sir. I know the crew will be honored.”
The SECNAV ended the call and said, “Wes is a rock-steady commander, sir. It’s no surprise the TR has numerous battle E’s for….
Then the intercom interrupted. “Mr. President, the National Security Advisor would like to join you.”
“Send him in, Doris.”
The NSA walked in and grabbed the remote to one of the five TVs in the Oval Office. He was getting numbers from his cell phone. “564. Got it!”
He punched 5-6-4 into the remote and on channel 564 was a feed from Al Jazeera. A ski-masked man sat reading a statement. Just then, another man from the State Department entered the office as interpreter and started translating immediately, “… praise unto him. The good and righteous forces of the brotherhood have on this day cut off the head of the great serpent in our holy waters. We have, in one act of justice, vaporized the mighty fleet of the Infidels. We have melted their ships and sent their sailors to an agonizing death. This is the power of the true, the righteous, the believers. And this is the fate of the Infidel. Allah be praised.”
On the screen, the whole thing started again. First, there was music then some hokey graphics of an old A-bomb test, scratches and all, superimposed over a picture of an American aircraft carrier. Then to the spokesperson in the mask who said, “Brothers of the great battle, we come to you tonight with joyous hearts and the goodness of praise onto him… The good and righteous….”
“That’s enough; we get the gist,” the President said.
“Obviously, they pre-recorded that and don’t know their mission failed yet,” Bill observed.
“Thank God,” the NSA said.
“It certainly supports the fact that the attack was with the loose nuke,” Ray said. “Melting ships, vaporized fleet.”
“It makes sense to me,” the SECNAV said. “The TR all by herself is one of the most powerful entities on earth. She is definitely a crown jewel of America’s foreign policy and, as such, a big prize to bag. Taking out an entire American Carrier Strike Group with the nuke would have been a grand play and one the world wouldn’t soon forget.”
“Also, she is purely a military target,” Reynolds added, “so world recrimination would be less than if they nuked, lets say, New York or L.A. where millions of civilians would die. It kind of makes sense politically.”
“When did these guys ever start making sense?” Hiccock wondered aloud. He started coming to the realization that he had been wrong about a detonation on U.S. soil. It bothered him; it shouldn’t, but it did nonetheless.
The looped message played one more time then it was abruptly cut off mid-sentence and a slide in Arabic went up.
“I think they just found out they celebrated a bit prematurely.”
The story on the attempted nuclear attack on the TR broke and broke big. The Defense Department’s immediate release of the video from the carrier that showed the attempts to hail and warn the approaching boats, the warning shot, and the inevitable explosions made for great TV. The sound of the nuke alert siren was clipped off the official release version. Also priceless was the almost pitiful way the terrorist spokesperson was bragging about the success of the attack and its abrupt removal from the airwaves.
Along with a giant sigh of national relief, blustering political posers invaded the cable and on-air news channels rewriting recent history. Most of them now clearly pointed out their skepticism over a terrorist actually detonating the suitcase nuke in a major city, declaring that they had an inkling that all these guys really wanted to do was attack a military target.
Then, in a wave of nationwide Alzheimer’s, everyone chastened President Mitchell for allowing America to think that its cities were ever in
peril, when surely his experts and daily security briefings must have been telling him about the intended attack on the carrier.
Two final cultural nails were put into the coffin of the loose nuke nightmare. The first was that the website, MyCEP.com, went from four million hits a day, down to forty-four. Then came a “Saturday Night Live” parody of the Al Jazeera “Melted Ships” video. In this version, the masked terrorist spokesperson kept having premature orgasms as he tried to follow the script. It ended with a shot of 72 virgins, some bored, some sleeping, and some playing solitaire up in Heaven.
The audience response was the convulsive laughter born out of the deep terror shared just a few days earlier.
“I think it’s a great idea. You and my mom can plan my kid’s life. All I’ll have to do is show up and pay for everything.” Bill was being sarcastic — big mistake with a pregnant woman.
“Hey, I pay for just as much around here as you. And she’s your mother! God knows how she survived you.”
“Cool your jets, lady. I was kidding. Although I do think you and my mom getting some time together is a good idea. Besides, my dad loves you.”
“He’s so sweet to me. So it’s set then for next Thursday.”
“Yes, only we’ll stay in a hotel. Somewhere midtown.”
“They’re not going to like that.”
“Their apartment in Commack is too small for us and the Secret Service detail and it’s too much work for all of us to go upstate to the cabin. Besides, you’ll lose Dad to the fish up there.”
“They’d never let you splurge for a hotel room for them.”
“First off, we’ll fib a little and tell them Uncle Sam is paying for it. And second, since we have tickets to take them to the play Wednesday, then dinner after, where we will tell them we are going to get remarried, it makes sense for them not to go all the way back to Long Island late at night. I’ll call her after we eat.”
“What do you want for dinner?” Janice asked glad for a change of subject.
“Whatever. Don’t go to any trouble.”
“No trouble. Do you want pasta, meat, chicken, what?”
“Well, maybe if you could make that chicken dish with the sun dried tomatoes and the wine sauce… and maybe a little ziti with pesto on the side. Oh, and those cheesy croutons in a Caesar salad. Or with the blue cheese dressing if it’s too much trouble to make Caesar. Oh, and maybe you could steam some asparagus with that hollandaise sauce from the pouch?”
“From the pouch?”
“Hey, I don’t want you to go to too much trouble.”
“You don’t want me to go to too much trouble… but a little is okay?”
“Hey, you asked!”
“Go sit down, dreamboat, and the kitchen staff will have dinner ready in about an hour.”
“You sure it’s no trouble?”
“Ahhh, shut up, already.”
Bill went into his study. Now that the nuke was absent and accounted for, much of America got back to living a normal life. For the Hiccocks, that meant making plans to go up to New York. Bill had a speaking engagement up there and he needed to decommission Bridgestone and Ross, officially, face to face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Rendezvous With The Devil
When word came of the death of the Palestinian truck driver, it matched an account from B amp; R that their truck driver, Jamal, had dropped off what he thought were plumbing supplies at another truck in the desert driven by a Palestinian. Pictures of the dead man were confirmed as the driver to whom the “hot load” was transferred, by Jamal, who was now very grateful and talkative in return for American radiation therapy. Joey placed the report in the normal pile with a note reading “Possible route of Roosevelt Bomb” (which is what they were calling the exploded suitcase nuke now).
Ann climbed the steps of the Bedford Street subway stop. As she exited into the Williamsburg, Brooklyn night, past the chained bicycles, the pizza shops, and Polish restaurants, it took all of her will not to turn around to get back on the L train and back to Mark’s place. But she steeled herself and quickened her pace, as if the mere act of aggressively walking would change her resolve when she faced Gary. He would try to deny it, of course, but enough of her friends saw him with that tramp. She had to confront him or she could never look herself in the mirror again.
She met Gary at a Truth for 9/11 rally. Gary was fearless as he stood yelling at the top of his lungs “Bush knew! Cheney too! 9/11 was an inside job.” She remembered how he faced down a group of steelworkers who objected to his exercising his right to free speech by trying to muzzle him just because he was the lone, courageous voice crying out during the moments of silence and the ringing of the bells at the 9/11 ceremonies at Ground Zero.
Ann had seen the Internet videos and she was enamored with the likes of Sean Penn and Rosie O’Donnell who had the guts to say that fire couldn’t melt steel and reveal the truth that a missile hit the Pentagon, not a plane. Overall, she came to learn from Gary that the attack on the towers was planned to be a “New Pearl Harbor” by the neocons, who were mostly Jews, like Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Armitage and who had been planning for war against Islam well before their propped up puppet, George Bush, stole an election and took power. She was disgusted over how they used the peaceful followers of the religion of Islam and activist Muslims as scapegoats, all the while denying them fundamental freedoms such as Habeas Corpus. With all these wrongs to right, things between Gary and Ann were great. Protesting by day and making out by night. But as soon as the protests became passe, Gary started to become less attentive, less involved…with her.
As she turned the corner of Bedford Avenue, walking closer to her confrontation with Gary, Ann steeled herself with the knowledge that Professor Keller… ‘Mark’ was right. She was a human being, no less than any other, and entitled to her rights and dignity. In the last weeks, Mark had helped her realize that she possessed an inner strength and beauty that was undeniable to anyone who got to know her. “Our relationship no longer feeds my emotional, spiritual, and essential self.” Those were the words she chose. A closing argument designed to utterly defeat any objection or sense of guilt Gary might try to lay on her. Well, she didn’t as much choose the words as Mark suggested them. But true to his teachings, she took ownership of their power and now they were her mantra. Like profess…Mark said, “These are the only words you’ll ever need to say to anyone, Treasure Ann.” Although she discouraged others from using it, Ann liked when Mark called her by her whole name. He found it on her NYU enrollment form, and he asked if, when they were alone, he could call her by it. Of course he would never use it in public or when he called on her in his lecture hall, which she attended three times a week. He was older, charming, and so smart. He shone even brighter in her eyes when he spoke inspiringly of the nobility of the struggle of the Muslims against the forces of Judeo-Christian capitalism and its imperialist colonization. How Muslims were an entire culture left behind by history. In fact, things really got started between she and Mark when he invited her to listen to a radical Imam in a basement on Atlantic Avenue. She had to watch through a basement window because the men also prayed on mats prior to the speech and women weren’t allowed. But on the way home, she knew he was all she had ever hoped for.
On the other hand, Gary, when he learned Ann’s entire first name, simply decided to call her Pleasure. That worked for a time, especially in the beginning of their relationship. They would sneak around looking for places to kiss and grope. Occasionally, they’d find a closet or empty room and they would go at it, usually ending with her on her knees and him with his hands behind her head. At first, he would always wrap his arms around her and hold her for a moment afterwards, always kissing her on her cheek instead of on her lips afterwards; nothing like the deeper way he would kiss her before she had “Pleasured” him. She wondered if he had an aversion to his own….
She banished the thought from her mind when she saw the steps to the six-story tenem
ent walk up on North 6th where she and Gary had shared an apartment since they were freshmen. Well, it was Gary’s place originally and she kind of moved in. As her feet scraped the gritty, steep steps, her thoughts returned to how, after a while, Gary didn’t even bother to hug her afterwards. He’d just neaten up and say something about being “late.” Then a quick peck on the cheek and he was gone.
As she turned the key in the front door of the vestibule, she made note to take her peace sign off the ring before she threw the keys back at him. Once inside, she stopped at the bottom of the stairs and took a deep breath.
The fact that Treasure Ann Hunnicut was a victim, was old news. Now she was one of the walking wounded as well. Shunning her Mormon roots at 17, and armed with a 1584 SAT score and a scholarship, she fled to New York City and NYU. Her open heart and naivete became a beacon to the predators that inhabit this city of anonymity. Falling in with the young crowd around 8th street and the surrounding coffee shops, she learned of the social ills and political realities that she had been shielded from in her pristine Utah environment. She shortened her name to Ann to better fit in without having to be “the Mormon girl.” She soon started to become overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of information on the arrogances and prejudices the United States of America was inflicting on the rest of the world. It was then that she met Gary, an NYU student, who, even though his grades were nowhere near Ann’s, immediately set himself up as her mentor. Within a week, he had the 5’8 blonde with a healthy body and soft, endearing eyes, under his spell. She became his following of one. He mostly kept her in check by his never letting her feel as though she totally satisfied him. That kept her trying anything and everything to gain his approval.
Subservience was her pattern with men, whether they were in her family, her community, the men she met socially, or when she was working as a waitress one summer. She was emotionally damaged and her esteem was inexorably tied to the nearest male figure. Gary perfected his advantage by getting her to be his sexual convenience. Besides, blowjobs were what passed as “making out” these days. It was almost expected that the oral gratuity was part of the new courting ritual. On Astor Place, it was referred to as “pulling a Lewinsky” and eventually shortened to, “Getting a Lewy.” Of course, among the 20-somethings, only the Poly-Sci students had a clue what that ancient reference alluded to. The ultimate level of casual oral sex reached its pinnacle with the buy-in from young women, on something relegated as harmless, called “Rainbowing.” A young girl would “register” a unique shade of lipstick and transfer that shade indelibly onto a male’s member as a way to prove to his friends that he got a specific girl to do him, and also as a way a girl could mark her territory to warn off other “sluts.”
The Hammer of God Page 26
