Castle Bravo

by Karna Small Bodman

  He got out of the shower, dried off and pulled on a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to jog over to Nurlan’s dorm and talk about the trip some more. He knew Nurlan would be leaving right after final exams, and he had been bugging Pete to make up his mind. He had said it would be a great adventure and not to worry about money too much because Nurlan had lined up a place to stay in the same building where his sister had a small apartment. She had a friend who wanted to sub lease a place, and they could have it for a good price. Pete wondered about the sister. All Nurlan had said was that she was pretty involved in the Nevada Semipalatinsk protest movement because he had been affected by the tests. He knew that Nurlan walked with a slight limp, but he never complained or talked much about it, so Pete hadn’t pressed him. At least the guy had been able to play a fairly good game of beach volleyball. But had he suffered too? Were there other things wrong with him? Pete knew that sometimes the effects of radiation skipped a generation. He knew that somehow it got into the genes and screwed them up and then even grandchildren could get leukemia, thyroid cancer, kidney and liver problems, and some young people were diagnosed with schizophrenia. He hadn’t seen any of those symptoms in Nurlan. And he hadn’t seen too much of that in Hawaii with the survivors he knew there, though the cancer rates were out of sight. But over in Kazakhstan where there were over a million people exposed to excess radiation from the Soviet tests, Nurlan had said that the effects were much worse.

  Pete had thought a lot about things Nurlan had told him concerning the effects of the Soviet tests. While the US Government had been callous and seemed unaware of some of the dangers of radiation back in the 40s and 50s, it sounded like the Soviets didn’t really give a damn. Nurlan said they even herded groups of people close to the test sites to examine them later and see the effects of radiation. They had literally been human guinea pigs. It was monstrous.

  Then again, he had said that the Soviets used Kazakhstan not only to test nuclear bombs, but they used the country as one of their main gulags. They sent all sorts of prisoners there to do hard labor just for being a so-called “Enemy of the People.” Whatever the hell that was. Even Alexander Solzhenitsyn was kept there for years, forced to work in below freezing temperatures with little clothing and scarce food. A bit of black bread was a delicacy, and most of the prisoners quickly died of starvation and extreme cold. He said that there were miles and miles of hills that were really mass graves.

  He thought about that for a while and figured that while what had happened in Kazakhstan was a testament to Soviet brutality, the American government had also let people, his people, starve when they were moved to different islands and left to fend for themselves. Then he thought about the time when Roosevelt had rounded up all the Japanese people living in the states and put them into camps during World War II. That was another group that should be getting better reparations for what the government did to them.

  Pete left the sports complex and headed out into the bright California sunshine. The balmy air was quite a contrast to the images he had about gulags and people freezing to death. Of course, in the summer the people of Kazakhstan had the opposite problem. It could be brutally hot. Did he really want to go way over there and work in that heat? The more he thought about it, the more he figured it was okay as long as he could get a good job, save some money and hook up with the big protest group.

  As for his own protest group, he had sent several more messages to that White House e-mail address he had been using. Something called Public Liaison. But no one had ever answered him. The more his messages were ignored, the more determined he was to exact some sort of revenge on the government. The unfeeling, uncaring government that had caused so much death and destruction with their god-awful nuclear test program. It wasn’t right. It had never been right. And now if he could get international support, he just might figure out a way to make the White House and Congress pay attention and grant reparations. And if they didn’t, it just might be pay-back time.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Samantha said, pushing open the door to the first floor corner office of the chief of staff. Through the back windows she saw that a gentle breeze was ruffling the leaves on the trees bordering the South Lawn. She wondered if she had ruffled some feathers and whether that was why she had been summoned to this early morning chat. Her boss was the national security advisor. She reported to him. But the chief of staff was closest to the president, so when he summoned a member of the staff, you always complied.

  Michael Benson glanced up from a print-out of the president’s schedule that was lying on top of a stack of papers on his mahogany desk and motioned her to sit down. “Yes. We need to talk about this latest dust-up you seem to be having with Max Federman.”

  As a member of Congress, Mike Benson had been a staunch supporter of the president in his first term and had developed a take-no-prisoners reputation when it came to pushing through the president’s programs. When the president was re-elected, he decided he needed some muscle in the front office. The first chief of staff was a friendly Hispanic governor, but the president thought he might be a bit too friendly. He needed someone to knock heads and play the bad cop to the president’s good cop image. So he had sent the Governor to be his ambassador to Spain and brought in Benson. Now Samantha faced him with a slight sense of trepidation.

  “Yes, he heard me bring up the subject of a new threat at the senior staff meeting. This whole EMP idea has been bugging me, and I think it deserves a threat assessment. Evidently Max has a different view.”

  “This EMP idea has been bugging you? Who exactly is doing the bugging, if I may ask?” Mike asked in a rather imperious tone.

  “It isn’t exactly some one, it’s the whole issue.”

  “It’s the whole issue,” he mimicked. “And just what makes you think that this is something the entire federal government should suddenly start studying?”

  Samantha shifted in her chair. She knew that the intelligence agencies were all working overtime gathering information from agents around the world, sifting through intel from allies, placing people in dangerous situations to try and infiltrate any number of terrorist organizations and give us warning of plans and plots being hatched in all kinds of places. As they got advance word, they had been able to prevent dozens of attacks over the past several years. They also had teams of people, mainly from the cabinet Department of Homeland Security assessing the safety of entry points, ports and border areas while other groups were working on more amorphous issues such as biological and chemical threats. But so far no one was paying any attention to the threat of an electro-magnetic pulse. No one except for a few scientists who had served on the old EMP Commission. But as she had told her staff, Congress dutifully held hearings every few years without any spotlight ever being shown on their reports. And now that commission had been disbanded.

  So why was she getting so exercised over such an esoteric idea? And why now? Just because she had read a report about some meetings and missile tests that took place overseas? No, it was more than that. She had read that report, and it had almost made her hair stand up when she thought about the possible effects of such an attack on any part of the United States. It wouldn’t take much. Just a small nuclear device. Just a small delivery vehicle. Just a small ship with a small crew could wreak so much damage that they’d all be living like the Amish … if they were living at all.

  She leaned forward in her chair, brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear and made eye contact with the chief of staff. “Look, I know we’ve got a lot going on right now what with the Lincoln Tunnel plot, the food supply issues, CDC worries and all the rest …”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Mike said.

  “It’s just that I read a classified report from a contact at the Pentagon about how both the Russians and the Chinese have considered using EMP type weapons at various times. And you know about the
Iranian missile tests.”

  “So the Russians and Chinese considered an EMP weapon. But they never did anything with them,” he countered. “You know that. Obviously, cooler heads prevailed. Both of those countries know that if they ever attacked us with any type of weapon, we’d retaliate against Moscow or Beijing in a heartbeat. Of course, they wouldn’t use them. And as for Iran, they’ve been testing for years.”

  “But what if a weapon were set off in our atmosphere and it had no return address?” Samantha pressed.

  “What if? I could give you dozens of what if’s right now. We have red team/blue team exercises going on all the time. Is that what you think we should do? Add EMP to one of the exercises?” he asked.

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Samantha said. “We could get some of the former EMP Commission people on one side and a few analysts from the Pentagon, DHS and maybe Energy on the other. And I could assemble an inter-agency task force to look into sources for this type of weapon. I mean, double check the dismantling that’s going on of existing nuclear materials. Work more closely with the Nuclear Threat Initiative people. That sort of thing. What do you think?”

  “I think your whole idea would be wasting valuable resources when we really can’t afford the personnel right now.”

  “But …”

  He raised his hand to quiet her. “Samantha, I appreciate you’ve been handed a tough job heading up that directorate. But it’s my job to balance interests here. We can’t take on every idea, every group, every threat. We just don’t have the people or the budgets to cover every cockamamie idea that comes out of a thriller novel these days.”

  “But this isn’t …”

  “Listen to me. The reason I wanted to talk to you in private, not in front of the whole senior staff at one of our morning meetings, is because I want you to quiet this down, not rev it up. Max Federman did come to me after you raised the issue in the meeting. He pointed out that he’s trying, we’re all trying, to help in the vice president’s election bid.”

  “I know that, but how …”

  “And what we’re all trying to do is to project an image of control, strength, power if you will. You know that the first job of a president is to protect the country. It’s not arranging doctor’s visits for everyone who has the flu or finding jobs for people who don’t bother to finish school or figuring out who should marry whom. The other candidates can argue those issues all they want, but what our candidate will be arguing is the continuation of a government that has and will protect its people. We’re doing a fairly decent job of that right now, and Jayson Keller is going to keep those policies in place. In other words, we need to reassure the people that we’re on top of things, not create a lot of noise about threats to the country that have no real foundation and no purpose other than to scare a lot of folks into thinking they’re in constant danger. We don’t need that. And we don’t need your “Cry Wolf” tactics right now. You can investigate all you want. On your own or with your buddies at DOD if you need to. But right now I want no publicity on this crazy notion of yours. No inter-agency meetings. No play acting and no more fights with Max? Is that clear?”

  Samantha sat there stunned. Since she had been named head of the White House Office of Homeland Security, she thought she would have the support of the higher-ups. Obviously, she thought wrong. What now? Would she just have to take the Pentagon report and file it away in her safe and forget about the whole issue? That’s what Mike was really asking her to do. Maybe he was right. Maybe she had over-reacted. Lord knows she and her small staff had enough problems to work on right now.

  She sighed and said the only thing she felt was appropriate at a moment like this, “I understand your point. And Max’s position. Of course, I do. And I respect your position.”

  The chief softened his gaze and stood up, effectively ending the meeting. “Thanks for coming in early.” He glanced at his watch and added, “See you in a little while at the senior staff meeting. We have a lot on the president’s schedule to talk about today, including that state visit coming up.”

  “Yes, I know,” Samantha said, getting up from her chair. She walked out of the office, nodded to the secretary, went into the hall, turned right and started up the stairs to her second floor office. Her words Yes I know echoed in her mind. Yes, she knows what? That she serves at the pleasure of the president and that really means at the pleasure of his chief of staff? Sure. That part was obvious. So if she wanted to keep her job and focus on the many actual threats facing the nation right now she’d have to prioritize her time. Okay, she knew she’d have to do that. But how was she going to stop thinking about an attack that could be absolutely devastating?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “So when do you leave for Kazakhstan?” Godfrey Nims, the company lobbyist asked, leaning against the door jamb of Tripp’s K Street office.

  “Late tomorrow night,” Tripp replied.

  “Before you leave, do you think we could snag a golf game?”

  “Sure. We’ll go out to Burning Tree. Don’t have to worry about tee times out there.” Tripp swiveled around to glance out the picture window behind his desk. Weather looks good. Maybe we could take a break and head out after lunch,” he said, taking a sip of his ever present Starbucks coffee.

  “What about Jake?” Godfrey asked. “If he’s still in town, maybe he could come along.”

  “No, Jake flew back to Dallas to get things organized at his place and pack up the right clothes. We’ll meet up at the airport for the first leg to Frankfurt.”

  “Gonna be a long flight this time, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s about eight hours to Germany. Then we get another flight that takes about four hours over to Almaty.”

  “I wonder what that place is like.”

  “It’s actually a pretty neat city,” Tripp replied. “Word is that everyone wants to live there. Nobody really wants to live in Astana, the capital.”

  “So why not have the capital in Almaty?”

  “It got too crowded, and the government was trying to develop some other areas. Kind of like what Brazil did, I guess. You know, everyone wanted to live in Rio but they wanted to get things going farther inland, so they built their capital in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Yeah. Brasilia. Been there,” Godfrey said. “Weird place. Kind of looks like something out of a sci-fi flick. Strange round buildings, upside-down structures. When I was there years ago I heard about how all the government types couldn’t wait for the weekend so they could fly back to Rio and hit the beaches and clubs. Of course they built that place a while back so at least they’ve got a few decent restaurants and apartment buildings now. But still.”

  “Well, I guess it must be sort of like that in Astana. There was another reason though.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Almaty is pretty close to the Chinese border but Astana is way north, away from China and also away from Russia. So I figure it was a strategic move in case either of those countries decided to make a move on them.”

  “Oh, you mean with the capital so far inland, they’d have plenty of warning before any tanks rolled in?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But Russia isn’t going to go in like they invaded Afghanistan,” Godfrey said.

  “Don’t be too sure. There have been rumblings about Russia’s designs on that country ever since it broke away. I mean, look what they did to Georgia. They always use the excuse that they’re simply protecting ethnic Russians who happen to live in one place or another. And there are a ton of Russians living in Kazakhstan.”

  “Oh great. So you’re going over there and Russia might invade?” Godfrey asked.

  “No, I didn’t say that. I don’t think anybody has picked up troop movements. The State Department hasn’t put out any travel restrictions. I was just giving you the lay of the land.”

  “Well, let’s just hope the Kazakhs can fend them off if anything does happen.”

&nbs
p; “They probably can,” Tripp said. “Anyway, I think it’s going to be a good trip. We’ll nail down some final payment schedules, head over to Atyrau on the Caspian and then go see our teams out in those fields that seem a bit screwed up right now.”

  “Seems strange that you’re going into the field.”

  “With Jake on this one, he’s the expert, so I figure we’ll go together. It shouldn’t take too long. Besides, it gives me a chance to see another part of the country.”

  “Kind of interesting that you’ve hired a man who could be your future father-in-law,” Godfrey said, raising an eyebrow.

  Would Jake be his father-in-law? Would he and Samantha ever get their act together and make it permanent? He sat back in his leather desk chair, put his feet up on the desk and pondered the idea. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about it. In fact, he thought about her all the time, especially when he was on the road and hadn’t seen her in a while. He missed her on the long trips. Then when he was in town they tried to coordinate their schedules, but it didn’t always work out. He knew his job wasn’t going to change much in the near future. But hers might. If Jayson Keller were elected the next president, she might decide that it was time to leave and go back to the private sector. After all, even when a new president was from the same party, everyone in the White House tendered their resignations as a matter of custom. They had all served the previous president, and the new one had to have the freedom to appoint whomever he wanted. Sometimes he kept people on, especially the ones who weren’t political like some of the secretaries at the NSC. A couple of them had worked for four or five presidents, knew how the world worked and had contacts in every major capital. They were too valuable to let go. But almost all of the assistants to the president, deputies, and others usually left.