The Carrier

by Mattias Berg

  Any signage relating to nuclear weapons had been tidied away prior to the event. By granting the public and the media access to the American base for the very first time, our military administration would meet two objectives: “proving” that there were no nuclear warheads on the base while keeping the activists one additional barrier away—the entrance had been set up by the outer gates, where anyone without a ticket would be stopped. According to the information signs, security procedures would be more stringent than at a civilian airport. Scanning and body search for everybody, no exceptions.

  I stood still in the pelting rain, tugged the hood over my head while the lines wound their way forward, and pondered how I was going to make my way past the guards. Even the morass of activists were closer to the fence. A bizarre set piece, as necessary as it was mad, began to unfold.

  The P.R. balance was delicate. Public opinion was usually our best friend—especially for the last ten years or so during which time the media hardly reported anything about the ongoing nuclear escalation, our new generation of weapons and carriers, the “Revitalization”. But at any time the balance could tip the other way, as happened during the Vietnam War.

  The guards could have bundled up this many activists in a few short minutes, and without for using anything heavier than batons. “But there is also a balance between common sense and sensibility,” Edelweiss used to preach. A quick move against the idealistic youth around the perimeter fence, many of them still teenagers, would result in too much negative publicity. Destroy the P.R. value of the event in one go.

  The instructions were therefore almost certainly that the guard force should refrain from escalation. Stand in their rows with automatic weapons at the ready. Let themselves be taunted by the songs and the chants, the obscene gestures, without batting an eyelid—until the activists moved first and tried to storm the base.

  Somewhere on or around the base Ingrid and Jesús María could be waiting for the same decisive moment. A ripple through the crowd—disorder, ideally some violent scenes—would create the best opening for the mission, whatever it might be, because chaos is the best camouflage. An opportunity, in one way or another, to obtain root access to the base’s servers which Ingrid needed in order to connect Kleine Brogel to the Nuclear Family: our network of warheads around the world. One of the final pieces in the jigsaw of her demented plan.

  And it seemed possible that Ingrid might specifically have chosen this occasion. Spotters’ Day. Friday, December 13. St Lucia’s day, the Sicilian martyr she had told me they celebrated in such a big way in Sweden.

  I scanned the crowds, but saw no sign of anybody who might be Ingrid or Jesús María. Nor of our main pursuers: the compact Zafirah or the vast Kurt-or-John, whichever had survived. None of those who had been keeping track of me—or maybe of each other—at the Bruegelhuis before lunch.

  So once all those in line had finally passed through the checkpoints and the clock by the entrance to the base—the illuminated atomic clock which was yet another of our propaganda weapons—had whirred over to 19.30.00.00, I started to walk toward the sentry box.

  It was going to be almost impossible to get in. The sort of task which was routine for me.

  “Are there any tickets left?” I asked with a marked Swedish accent.

  The guard in the box gave me a long look, without saying a word. I was so hard to place, with my wig and the trim false beard—somewhere along the continuum of spotter, spy, hipster—the enormous backpack covered in decals, the absence of conspicuous binoculars. He had often seen me here before and could not disguise the effort of the search through his memory. But he was not able to identify my new face.

  “Would you be so good as to show me your passport, first, sir,” he said at last.

  I was ready to leap into action. Had already worked out my next step and the one after that, depending on what ensued: the positions of the guards relative to each other, the time needed to make my way through the outer and then the inner gate. But my passport only elicited a friendly peep from the computer. Both scanning and body search rendered unnecessary.

  “A warm welcome, Herr Gustafsson. Here is your ticket!”

  At our own base, like a pocket within the surrounding N.A.T.O. compound, everything was organized for Spotters’ Day. Ministers and military commanders in the control tower, together with members of the media. Attachés and other authorized observers formed the innermost ring, interspersed among them were a few lucky enthusiasts who had won a V.I.P. package by ballot. Then increasing numbers of people in concentric circles, each marked out by yellow lines in the asphalt. The outermost, at least three hundred feet wide, contained thousands of people.

  I had been given a ticket at the center of the action. And it seemed that everyone was waiting for me.

  Because just when the guards had escorted me to my place—a few enthusiasts having to move a fraction to the right before the mass of people flowed together again like liquid—three F.16s took off with a terrible roar. I had said no thanks to the earplugs offered to me on the way across the base, yet another detail which distinguished observers from enthusiasts.

  Through my field glasses I saw the F.16s perform a “barrel roll” in close formation and then a neat “co-ordinated roll”. When the engines were at enough of a distance, the aircraft lights forming luminous bars against the black storm clouds, one could hear the exhilarated cheering of the fans in our inner base. With a few seconds’ delay came the response of the activists outside the gates, catcalls and howls.

  This was only the warm-up. Although the show continued with “cartwheels” and “split ‘S’s”, impressive in themselves, everybody seemed to be waiting with impatience and even trepidation for “The New Trick”. According to the taxi driver it had been the subject of speculation for weeks, even months. Something which had never before been shown anywhere.

  I glanced at an official’s watch next to me: 8.10 p.m. Some people were no doubt beginning to think, like me, that the rumors had been a way to try to match the world record for spectator numbers. The legendary Miramar Air Show in California usually attracted about seven hundred thousand visitors during the course of three days. Here they must have let in a hundred thousand people—for a single hour of flying stunts.

  And that’s when it happened.

  The spectators were herded outward by the guards, everybody, starting with us right in the middle out to the widest of the concentric circles. Then the ground opened up right where we had just been standing, in the middle of the asphalt. Two luminous circles became visible a couple of yards below the surface. The one on the left had a diameter of about eighty feet, the right-hand one at most thirty.

  I knew that marketing was becoming an ever more important part of the military machinery. That the cost of everything was growing, requiring more and more external financing since our Federal military budget was no longer sufficient—even though it was now 50 per cent bigger than before 9/11. That even the astronomical cost of our new generation of nuclear weapons was presumably again a gross underestimate. And that all of our current primary investors were gathered around me in the V.I.P. circle here at Kleine Brogel—as well as media and military dignitaries in the padded spectator seats in the warmth of the control tower.

  That, of course, was why the opportunity was being taken to demonstrate our new guidance system: the advantages must have been calculated to outweigh the disadvantages. But with the enormous number of people gathered, it was as big a P.R. risk as an opportunity. Especially bearing in mind that the system had never before been tested outside strictly controlled conditions.

  Conventional weaponry was more precise than nuclear warheads and missiles, which usually needed to be no more than approximately on target, because of their enormous explosive force. But during recent decades the accuracy of nuclear weapons had improved.

  And soon the new B.61-12 bomb would be operational. Our most expensive nuclear weapon to date.

  The bomb was not going to be
more powerful than other nuclear weapons currently in existence—rather significantly less so: no more than three times the force of the Hiroshima bomb. Yet most external commentators agreed that this would be the most dangerous weapon man had invented.

  By using the unique radar-based guidance system, it was thought that the margin of error for the B.61-12 would be reduced from on average three hundred feet for nuclear bombs to at most one hundred. The technicians had as usual been even more optimistic. Not more than sixty-five feet in acceptable weather conditions, perhaps fewer than thirty if operated with special skill, so they said. In this way, according to the rhetoric, we would be able to reduce the number of civilian casualties.

  The critics saw this differently. With the B.61-12, they claimed, we found ourselves back in the 1960s, at a period in our history when the evolution of mankind appeared to have halted for good. With Cold War-era dreams of tactical nuclear weaponry so compact that it might be carried in one’s pocket.

  According to reports, which remained unconfirmed, the Russians had at the time developed a small pistol with californium for nuclear ammunition. Officially, we never got further than our experimental “Davy Crockett”, a rifle with nuclear capacity.

  So as the F.16s banked sharply over Kleine Brogel and flew back in our direction, they brought with them the moment of hidden truth. Even though there would be no official comment after the event, however much the peace researchers might blog about the fact that we had demonstrated the guidance system for our future and much-debated nuclear bomb.

  I was therefore not surprised when the General jumped down and took his place in the left-hand red circle. I knew what efforts were needed nowadays to get the P.R. machinery humming, the aces that we had to throw into the game.

  Hughes was the only one remaining of our three most senior official nuclear weapons commanders—since both Falconetti and Goldsmith had been dismissed. The man in the right-hand circle was also immediately recognizable. R.R. Maine, the hurried replacement for Falconetti, seemed to have put on hardly two pounds since his time as an American football superstar when I was young. The article in the Washington Post had not wasted the opportunity to joke about it: that the nuclear football too was now within his field of responsibility.

  I suddenly realized what Ingrid might have in mind. There could be no better opportunity than here and now to allow a live nuclear charge to detonate. The result would not only be upward of a hundred thousand civilian deaths, together with two more of our most senior military officers, ministers, observers and crucial financiers. But also the worst possible publicity for the entire nuclear weapons system.

  I tried to extricate myself from the crowd, but did not get very far. The voice of the American commentator crackled excitedly through the loudspeakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, children, guests of honor, ten seconds to bomb release. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one . . . zero!” Through my field glasses I saw the bomb in free fall for a moment before the Kevlar parachute opened and swung to and fro as it sank toward its target. Despite the night-vision capability of my field glasses, it was impossible to tell whether this was a dummy or a real bomb—and if so, a nuclear one.

  The cheers were raucous, time both running out and endless. Thoughts raced through my mind. To what the debater and former missile operator Bruce Blair had said during a visit to NUCLEUS, when asked what would be needed to carry out a successful attack at a nuclear base from the inside. By swapping a dummy bomb for a real charge, for example.

  He did not have to think for long.

  “I would say two to three people, given today’s security system. Obviously harder the more people you have to involve,” he had said.

  General Hughes moved back and forth in the larger, left-hand circle, kept staring up at the falling object through the pelting rain. He too could not hide his excitement, or perhaps the slight concern one always feels during really complex maneuvers.

  Then the bomb exploded—and an enormous bouquet of flowers cascaded across the sky and showered down on him. A phenomenal firework display, it must have cost a fortune.

  General Hughes played it up a little. Looked skyward, shook his head and opened out his arms, before firing off a broad white smile for the benefit of the propaganda movies which would be sent out from here. And the message was unmistakable: that our military endeavors were all for the good of mankind. Bombs with flowers. “War is peace”, as George Orwell expressed it.

  Then came the last and unbeatable escalation in the propaganda warfare. When General Hughes gestured toward the smaller, red circle to the right.

  With the roar of the crowd growing by the second, Falconetti’s replacement stepped forward, theatrically placed on his head a burgundy Washington Redskins helmet from the old days, enjoying the moment to the full. When he closed the yellow visor over his face it took the commentator nearly a minute to make himself heard over the crowd.

  “O.K., I know he needs no introduction, so I’m just going to say R.R. . . .”

  “Maine!” the crowd chimed in.

  “. . . right, the man himself, one of America’s all-time famous athletes. Now responsible for all our nuclear missile submarines, aircraft and land-based launch sites. Highest supervisory authority over the military space program. Our whole digital war effort. Ladies and gentlemen, a true American hero!”

  A short pause over the loudspeakers. The crackle of static.

  “Now he’s ready for the decisive moment. Right, General?”

  The man in the helmet nodded, gave a double thumbs up, like a pilot himself.

  “And, ladies and gentlemen, children, guests of honor—are you ready too? Because here comes something that’s never been done before: a trick of the absolutely highest degree of difficulty. The first demonstration of our new guidance system for precision bombs, which minimizes the risk of human casualty in humanitarian conflicts. I just want you to notice that General Maine’s circle has a twenty-five-foot diameter and that the dummy bomb is going to be released from an altitude of almost thirty-three thousand feet. So cross your fingers, everyone.”

  When the only aircraft still airborne banked steeply and headed back toward us, I could clearly see through the maximum zoom on my field glasses the three, small, stylized triangles just under one of the fins of the warhead. Our own interpretation of the international nuclear symbol. The sign indicating that there really was a live nuclear charge in there.

  I looked around in desperation—and saw no-one making an effort to interrupt the demonstration, prevent the catastrophe. Maybe no-one else had noticed the tell-tale markings on the warhead. One often only sees what one wants to see, after all: seldom what one cannot even imagine.

  The F.16 climbed rapidly to 31,500 feet, to drop the dummy which was in fact a bomb, accompanied by the commentator’s steady countdown. “Five, four, three, two, one . . . Bomb release! Watch carefully now, ladies and gentlemen, children, guests of honor . . . because today we’re writing military history!”

  I stood there as the nuclear charge fell, slow and dreamlike through the atmosphere under its neat little parachute. Expected that it would be detonated at the same altitude as the Hiroshima bomb, 1,978 feet, as a sort of homage. Thought about Ingrid’s dark allure; how infernal the elegance of her preparation of this pacifist mass murder. Letting somebody switch out the dummy—or perhaps she had done it herself—in order to turn world opinion against nuclear weapons once and for all.

  The preaching over the loudspeakers rose to the level of an ecstatic evangelist: “Friday, December 13, 2013, the American base at Kleine Brogel, Belgium. You were here! This was not your unlucky day—but the luckiest day of your lives! To be part of something like this! 3,000 feet, 2,750 . . . 2,500 . . . Are you ready, R.R.?”

  Our two-star general, the folk hero, gave the commentator in the control tower another thumbs up. Straightened his helmet, again pulled the visor over his face. I shut my eyes for some reason, put my fingers in my ears.

 
But I could still hear the explosion. A low, dull rumble, loud enough to be heard, but not enough to disturb.

  Confused, I opened my eyes and saw that everything was still standing. Looked over at the small red circle where R.R. performed his carefully rehearsed trick, a perfect touchdown which proved that he really had stayed in good shape. Nimbly, he rolled a half turn to absorb the impact—before he touched the dummy bomb to the ground in the exact center of the ring.

  Then I turned my field glasses toward the landing strips, the aircraft, the fuel depots. The area from where the blast came. That old-fashioned, low-tech explosion, the very opposite of a nuclear charge. Thick, roiling black smoke rose toward the sky in the north-east corner of the base. As far away as one could get from the circle where R.R. Maine was now getting to his feet, after the successful demonstration of the world’s most advanced radar-based guidance system for bombs.

  Maybe he had not even noticed the attack, been so absorbed in his own bubble of adrenaline and euphoria. Before he realized that the applause would not come, the sirens had started to howl across the base, the lights to flash. The voice of the commentator was replaced by a recorded loop: “All visitors are requested to vacate the area immediately and to follow the instructions of the guards. This is not a drill! We repeat: this is not a drill!”

  I tried to control my breathing, assess the situation. Kept away from the guards who were beginning to direct all the guests of honor down through the evacuation exits which had been opened under the luminous red circles and that led into the network of culverts, then up onto the abandoned fields on the other side of the main road.

  Instead I waited until the activists were let in. Because those in charge of the outer gate had been forced to avoid even worse consequences—maybe some people suffocated, a few civilian deaths—when, after the explosion, the demonstrators tried to climb the fences to see what had happened inside the base. Simultaneously, the security forces stormed in to stop the protesters from getting any closer: to our sealed-off but possibly still revealing storage site for the live nuclear warheads, from which the smoke was now billowing. Soon everybody else found themselves trapped. Children, old enthusiasts, families.