Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

  Nakamoto looked at the Greater Manchurian president with no change in his expression. “Honorable President Len Pei Poom, we have come to discuss a matter of urgency and concern to the Japanese people—”

  Len sat down, not drawing his chair up to the table, as if he was about to leave momentarily. He looked pointedly at his watch and said nothing.

  The Japanese ambassador sank slowly into a seat.

  “Your nuclear missiles, Honorable Mr. President.”

  “What?” Len sounded more indignant than surprised.

  In fact, he had suspected as much.

  Nakamoto proceeded to open an envelope and spread out several black-and-white photographs of the inside of the Tamga facility, one of them showing the inside of the bunker. “These were taken from inside your facility.”

  Len refused to look down at the photographs. The Japanese gave him no chance to accuse them of spying.

  They began by acknowledging it. Clever. Nakamoto might look like a caricature, but that was clearly only on the surface.

  “You admit it,” Len said slowly, trying to recover.

  “I merely advise you of a fact. The prime minister is gravely concerned.”

  “He has no need to be.”

  “We do not agree. We wish control of the Tamga facility to ensure our security. We will keep this private.

  We understand you have Russia and the Chinas to contend with. But we have, as I say, our concerns. The Japanese Self Defense Force will send a small force to guard the missiles. We must agree before you ever use them, and a Japanese team will fire the missiles for you if—”

  Len allowed himself to laugh, although he saw nothing amusing. These people were serious.

  “Sir, our only objective is to insure that Greater Manchuria not threaten Japan.”

  “My answer is that you go back to your embassy. Mr. Lee, see these gentlemen to their car.”

  “Wait, please, Honorable Mr. President Len. I request that you let me make a call to Tokyo. I have a satellite phone cell that will put me in video contact from here, if you will but allow it. Let me but put this matter to Tokyo.”

  Len began to shake his head, but an old saying by Daniele Vare, an Italian diplomat, came to mind: “Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.”

  “Ambassador Nakamoto, you may make your call. I will be in my office chambers. When you are ready to talk again, pick up the phone in the corner and I will be back.”

  The rocky coastline approached rapidly and the missile climbed to forty meters in anticipation of a small cliff.

  The cliff approached at 600 kilometers per hour. At one instant the missile was flying over the sea, the next it was navigating over the rocky terrain of the Greater Manchurian wilderness. The missile continued on, following its programmed trajectory, dodging small mountains and trees and outcroppings of rocks, the land flying toward the video view at a dizzying speed.

  Every few minutes the missile transmitted a burst communication to the Galaxy satellite, the transmission composed of video images of the previous five minutes along with missile-status parameters. The transmission was triple encrypted, meaningless tones to a hostile receiver, the first encryption by the computer onboard, the second encryption done by varying the transmission frequency across the spectrum in planned jumps so that a receiver could pick up the entire transmission only if he knew what frequency to skip to. And the frequency skips took place at random times, essentially making for a third encryption. The final precaution was the randomminute transmission intervals, so that a receiving station could not detect the telemetry during the outages between transmissions. The random transmission intervals were done so that a listener would not detect a transmission pattern and be waiting for a burst communication every five minutes, which would be too regular. The integrated system was highly stealthy and amounted to a full data exchange under conditions that normally would dictate radio silence.

  The missile flew on, the afternoon sun beginning to sink in the sky. By sunset, the mission would be long over.

  changashan, greater manchuria Back in his office Len looked at Lee Chun Wah.

  “What are the Japanese doing? Their offer seems almost deliberately insulting. They want my missiles. A Japanese team to make sure I don’t play with my own toys, so to speak. And now they’re on the phone. What are they thinking?”

  “Only they know for sure. A not uncommon phenomenon for them.”

  “Any way of accessing the video cameras in the conference room? Getting an early read?”

  “Afraid not, sir. We can get the disk in from the computer once the session is over, but we can’t tap into the room now.”

  “Make a note—I want those cameras tied into my personal closed loop video. We may need to do this in the future.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The phone rang. Lee Chun Wah picked it up.

  “They are ready sir. And Nakamoto sounded shaken.”

  “Ambassador Nakamoto. What has Tokyo told you?”

  Nakamoto looked up from the table to the standing form of Len Pei Poom. Len’s directness seemed to be contagious. “Honorable Mr. President, Tokyo has decided to protect our nation. We must be rid of your threatening missiles.” Nakamoto pointed to the display of a notebook computer on the table. The display showed land flying toward the video eye, trees and hills passing by at a tremendous speed. “With a nominal five minute delay, this is the view out the targeting camera of one of the missiles we have launched at your Tamga facility. It will be arriving at the facility in approximately two minutes. We have one last chance to stop the missiles.

  Will you agree to sign a nonaggression pact with Japan, and agree to put Japanese Self Defense Force troops in command of your missiles?” ‘We. And now, if there is nothing else, we will get you back to your embassy,” Len said.

  “You consider this a bluff?”

  “I do.”

  “I will prove you are tragically mistaken. Mr. President.”

  Len noticed he was no longer the “Honorable Mr. President,” but he was too angry to deal with it. What he desired was to reach over and snap Nakamoto’s neck.

  Len forced himself to watch the computer display as the video showed the sky, then the horizon, then an aerial shot of the ground approaching. He tried to show no emotion as he recognized the Tamga facility approach the view. All a Japanese trick—after all, the technology to fake this was well within their means. But then the compound continued to grow closer in the video display.

  Len held his breath. (HAPTE8 tamga, greater manchuria The transmission came in from Galaxy satellite number three. The satellite identified itself, then issued a go code for the weapon to continue on its flight path for the target. If the message had not been received, the missile would have turned around and flown back out to sea and self-destructed. The attack could not take place unless the Japanese Defense Agency gave final confirmation within one minute of final arming and detonation of the warhead. But the message decoded to “detonate over target as planned,” and the missile made its final turn toward the target, now only one kilometer away over the ridge forming the Tamga Valley.

  The warhead self-checks remained satisfactory. The missile armed the warhead detonator train, removing the safety interlocks from the system. It moved the canister of plutonium dust into proximity of the high-explosive cylinder so that the donut-shaped plutonium canister completely surrounded the explosive. The explosion cloud would not chemically alter the plutonium, but rather disperse it. Next to the plutonium canister highpressure bottles of explosive ethylene gas were located, the gas pressure so high that a bottle failure alone could blow up half a city block. On the outside skin of the warhead were plastic bottles of vinyl acetate monomer liquid along with layered annular plastic bottles of other liquids, called “stardust” since they were miscellaneous additives that caused the polymerization to be able to proceed in the high temperatures of the fireball generated by the small high-explosive charge of the central deton
ator. The entire warhead was filled with inert nitrogen, which meant there was no stray oxygen to ruin the onboard chemicals or cause the ethylene to burn on warhead detonation.

  Now fully armed, the warhead reported back to the missile computer that it was ready. The missile, at range to the target indicating half a kilometer, pulled up on the winglets and climbed for the sky.

  The Tamga facility was now dead ahead by only a few hundred meters. The missile nose-cone video camera saw only the heavens above as the missile climbed, and when the altitude indicated a height of 1500 meters the winglets rotated to send the missile plummeting down over the target.

  The video camera showed the facility laid out like a still-color aerial photograph, the afternoon sun casting the low shadows of the trees over the compound, which grew rapidly closer as the missile dived for the center, the humpbacked earthen bunker shown on the navigation files describing the target. The view continued to grow until the surrounding complex was gone, only the central buildings and the bunker in view, with one of the SS-34 missiles rolled out on the southwest side of the bunker, the shadows of people clear in the camera view.

  Altitude 500 meters. The detonator, a small blasting cap, was energized by the missile-computer circuitry.

  Seeing the high voltage, the detonator exploded and caused the high-explosive charge to go off.

  Altitude 450 meters. The high-explosive detonation rippled through the plutonium canister, the fireball reaching out to the ethylene bottles and rupturing them. Contained in the high-energy gases of the explosion were plutonium fragments and ethylene gas. The ethylene did not burn or explode, since the high explosive had already used its oxidizer, and there was no oxygen inside the warhead, only nitrogen. The blast circle then extended to the vinyl acetate monomer bottles and the stardust, the plastic material of the bottles vaporizing, the liquid, then atomizing and vaporizing as well, taking the aerosol stardust with it. The pressure pulse blew off the warhead skin, and the cloud grew, a sphere of high pressure, high-temperature gases, the ethylene gas mixing with the vinyl acetate monomer in the high temperatures and reacting to form a vinyl-acetate ethylene copolymer—a liquid latex glue—which completed its reaction, using up the ethylene and vinyl acetate and stardust, the gas cloud finally cooling and changing from a sphere to a teardrop shape as it fell toward earth.

  The polymer glue then mixed with the plutonium dust and rained down on the earth, the first droplets falling onto the ground of the bunker, the SS-34 missile that had been rolled out, and those standing by the missile.

  After weapon one detonated, weapon two’s warhead exploded, adding a second wave of plutonium-latex rain down on the compound below.

  When the rain was finished, there was nothing left of either cruise missile. Weapons one and two, however, would live on in the lethal effects of their warheads.

  Their missions were accomplished.

  changashan, greater manchuria Finally the video display on the tabletop flashed as the image of the compound vanished.

  “That is it?” Len asked.

  “The weapons are now destroyed,” Nakamoto said.

  “I want you to know that many people argued against this course of action. None of us thought you would say no to us. It is regrettable that—”

  “Nakamoto, now that your movie is over, you must go. My missiles are not for sale. But thank your prime minister for the interesting video. The special effects were outstanding.”

  “But, Mr. President—”

  “I must go now. Mr. Lee Chun Wah will take you to the airport.”

  Len turned and left.

  The forty steps to his office had seemed a lifetime as Len thought about the strange presentation by the Japanese.

  When he opened the door to the office. Lee Chun Wah gestured to him rapidly.

  “There’s a phone call from Tamga, sir. The crew from the American television show ‘Conspiracy Exposed’— the ones you sent to interview the base commander— want to talk to you—they said something awful is happening.”

  Len listened for a moment, knit his brows. “No one picked up. I only heard screaming.”

  CHAPTEK changashan, greater manchuria Len put the phone down, a dread beginning to fill him.

  If the Japanese had truly attacked the weapons, the survival of Greater Manchuria was at risk. In fact. Greater Manchuria might not exist a week into the future without the SS-34s.

  A frantic knock came at the door. Intelligence officer Col. Ni Han Su rushed in.

  “Sir, the video, turn it on, now!”

  Len had spent too much of his life on battlefields to berate a junior who screamed at his superiors—a disciplined subordinate who behaved in this fashion did it for a very good reason. Len turned on the video to see an announcer from BBC Asia speaking, reporting on the destruction. The American reporters must have made their report before dying. The reality of the attack on his missiles was too clear.

  “Get Ambassador Nakamoto back in the conference room.”

  “Sir, he’s still there packing his equipment.”

  Len fairly burst into the room. Nakamoto looked up at him.

  “Ambassador Nakamoto, you and your countrymen are treacherous felons. You come here, make impossible demands, and while I receive you, you stab me in the back, just as you did the Americans at Pearl Harbor while you talked of peace. You have attacked my missiles, which I have kept only for defense. You have killed my men and will blame this savagery on my alleged in transigence. I promise you that the world will know every detail of what has happened here.”

  “Sir, I will overlook your unreasoned outburst for now and urge you to realize that it is in your best interests, and Greater Manchuria’s best interests, to keep this matter quiet. If so, Russia and the Chinas will not know you have lost your weapons. Japan will not, I guarantee you, speak of it. You keep your deterrent while Japan has its security, its freedom from fear of your former SS-34 nuclear missiles. This, sir, is the perfect solution.”

  Len looked at him in disbelief. “Surely you realize the world already knows. I have just heard it announced on the BBC. No more talk. You will be driven to the airport under escort from the palace guards. There you will meet the others from your embassy. You will all be put on a military transport and flown back to your island. God have mercy on your souls.” Len walked out of the room, motioning Lee Chun Wah to follow. Inside Len’s office he gave his command to Lee while raising the phone to his ear: “Go out to the airfield and see the commanding general of the air force at the tower. Allow the transport with Nakamoto and his people to get out over the Sea of Japan, but just on our side of the twenty kilometer territorial limit. When they are there, one of the escorting F-16’s will blow them out of the sky.” Lee Chun Wah nodded, his face grim. “And Lee, the disk of the meetings inside the conference room, copy and send to BBC. I want them on the air tonight. Unedited. We will let the world know exactly who the Japanese are behind their masks.

  Greater Manchuria may not survive but Japan will suffer with us.” Len stood, looking out the window at the approach to the palace’s entrance.

  He could see Nakamoto’s bent form walking to the limousine, then duck into it. The man looked old. It was later than he knew—his last day on earth. The operator clicked into the connection. “Yes, sir?”

  “Get me the President of the United States.”

  groton, connecticut On the other side of the world the early morning winter sun competed with scattered clouds, trying to light the landscape of the Connecticut countryside. Bruce Phillips took a breath of the northern air as he moved down the stair ramp from the Grumman twelve-passenger jet. The bare branches of the trees and weeks-old grimy snow might normally make for a gloomy scene, but to Phillips they added to the charm of this trip. He felt like a kid going with his father to pick out a Christmas present.

  Admiral Pacino walked three steps ahead of him to the waiting staff car, where an aide stood by the open door. Phillips climbed in next to Pacino. The car drove towa
rd the fence gate, the idling jet shrinking behind.

  For some minutes neither man said a word. Phillips looked out the window at the thick trees, their frozen branches waving in a cold wind.

  “You ever heard about the Vortex missile?” Pacino asked, looking out his own window.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Phillips moistened his lips, wanting a cigar but knowing it would not be proper unless his superior offered to let him smoke. All the more reason to be away from the top brass, he thought.

  “The Vortex antisubmarine missile, invented four years ago for the Seawolf class,” Pacino said. “The program was abandoned last year.”

  “I haven’t heard the term, sir.”

  Pacino nodded. “I was involved early in the program, I keep forgetting its classification. When I worked on it the Vortex name alone was classified secret. The program was compartmented, limited distribution, codeword stuff. Anyway, Admiral Donchez came up with the concept—an underwater weapon that’s a hybrid rocket and torpedo. It’s solid-rocket fueled, blue-laser guided.

  Warhead is seven tons of Plasticpac explosive with a plasma yield equivalent to the effect of a small battlefield nuclear device.”

  “An underwater rocket? With seven tons of Plasticpac?”

  Pacino paused, looking at Phillips. “You wouldn’t happen to have any cigars, would you?”

  Phillips grinned and pulled out two long Honduran cigars from his jacket pocket. “Sorry they aren’t Cuban,” he said, and passed the cigar cutter to Pacino, then his lighter, the emblem of the USS Greeneville worn by use. The back of the limo filled with mellow smoke. “Anyway, the missile worked well. I was at a Bahamas test-range exercise when the Vortex made its preop trial. The firing ship was an instrumented 637-class attack sub, gutted of equipment with the Vortex launcher installed. The target sub was an old diesel boat similarly instrumented.” Phillips glanced at Pacino, squinting through the smoke. Pacino seemed sad, or nostalgic, or both. “What happened?”

  “The missile worked perfectly. Blew the target sub to iron filings. The blast made a water-vapor mushroom cloud that rained down on us for five minutes. I was deaf for three days.”