Castle Bravo

by Karna Small Bodman

  Cammy rubbed her eyes and focused on her guest. “You can tell, huh? Didn’t leave here until after midnight, drove home, got a few hours and was back in at six this morning. Seeing you like this is the first break I’ve had since we got word of this thing. And now with just two days, three days, who knows how many days? Well, with this sort of a time line, it can only get worse.”

  A young man brought their coffee and announced, “Hey Cammy, I wanted to thank you for helping me out last night. When I figured out I had locked the keys in my car, I felt like such an idiot. But your trick really worked.”

  “What trick?” Samantha asked.

  Cammy swiveled around. “Well, when you’re working such long hours on all these complicated simulations, it’s easy to forget some of the simple stuff.”

  “You got that one right,” her assistant said with a grin. “I told her I was stupid enough to leave the keys inside, and she told me to call my house because there’s an extra set there.”

  “Then what? Did you have to get someone to drive you home to get them?” Samantha asked.

  “No,” Cammy replied. “He just needed someone at the house to get the extra key and call him here on his cell phone. Then he holds the cell phone next to the door lock and the person on the phone clicks the UNLOCK button on the extra key and voila. It opens the door.”

  “Amazing!” Samantha said. “How does that work?”

  “Has to do with frequencies. I work a lot with frequencies,” she said.

  “Yeah,” the assistant said, “She’s the frequency genius. Well, thanks again.” He took off toward his computer station.

  “So it’s frequencies, huh?” Samantha asked. All I know is AM and FM, and I don’t even know how those work.”

  “AM stands for Amplitude Modulation and FM stands for Frequency Modulation.”

  “I call it frickin’ magic,” Samantha said with a grin. “I’m afraid I’m more into strategy, and I’m really glad we’ve got you for execution, uh, so to speak.”

  Cammy went on to explain her latest experiments and how there was one particular idea that was her main focus right now. She said that after she finished today’s tests, she was planning to fly out to California first thing in the morning with Hunt Daniels, gather a team at their California facility and get on board a specially equipped 737 as soon as there was any word, any sighting or even a suspicion of where the enemy ship was out in the Pacific.

  “I heard that Hunt is going with you,” Samantha said. “He’s really a neat guy.”

  “Better than neat,” Cammy said, with the beginning of a dreamy smile on her face. “I always look forward to traveling with Hunt, even when it’s on a scary mission like this one.”

  “I did hear you two were an item,” Samantha said. “I don’t mean to get too personal, but are you two? I mean, is it serious?”

  “I hope so,” Cammy said. “Trouble is, we both work long hours. Hunt keeps getting sent all over the world on all kinds of secret projects, negotiations, investigations. Well, you know that as well as anybody. And so we don’t get to spend that much time together. But still, he’s great, and I’m hoping we can put it together one of these days. But how about you? You’re single, right? Anybody special on your radar scope, so to speak?”

  Samantha hesitated and then said, “Well, there was once. We had some of the same travel problems. But, well, not anymore.” She cleared her throat and said, “But back to our situation here. I have to say that I’ve been working on so many national security threats lately, biological issues, people trying to blow up commuter trains, nut cases being recruited as suicide bombers. I mean it’s full time all the time. But still. I see all of those other threats and arrests and problems as the parsley on the platter. The turkey on our platter right now is the threat of an EMP attack and it’s got me positively terrified.”

  “I’m with you there. In the past we’ve had warnings about things, at least for most of the ones I’ve heard about. Warnings from agents who have infiltrated terrorist groups, warnings from civilians who see suspicious stuff. And this time, we did get a warning. It just wasn’t very specific, so we don’t know where to look. I mean, I’ve been trying to figure out how our people can find a ship, vessel, destroyer, even a fishing boat in that incredibly huge area between the South China Sea and California, especially since we have no idea what kind of ship it might be, whether it’s camouflaged, or what flag it might be flying. But if any of our folks can find it, you can be sure we’ll have systems, defensive measures, and redundancies ready to go.” Then she added with a worried frown. “Trouble is, I really don’t know if any of them will work.”

  “Looks like you have a ton of great ideas, though. How in the world do you come up with this stuff?” Samantha said, spreading her arms around, gesturing to the multitude of computers and screens.

  “I do a lot of research,” Cammy said. Then she took a sip of her coffee and added, “Okay, I did tell my boss once that I learned the Rule of the 6 P’s a long time ago and try to live by that one.”

  “Rule of the 6 P’s?” Samantha asked, cocking her head.

  “Proper preparation precludes piss-poor performance,” Cammy intoned.

  Samantha burst out laughing. “You’re amazing.” She checked her watch. “Look, I know you’ve got a lot to do, and I don’t want to get in your way here. I just wanted to get up to speed on your plans since I’m trying to coordinate all of the activities of the agencies and your company and all the rest for Ken. But, by the way, where did your company get the funny name Bandaq Technologies anyway?”

  “Oh that,” Cammy said. “You see, it was years ago that the founders, these two guys, were sailing down in the Caribbean. They were bare-boating it and one night, as the story goes, they got the idea for the company while they were drinking banana daiquiris. So, Bandaq!”

  “And on that note, I’d better sail out of your way.” Samantha got up from her chair. Cammy got up too and led her across the room toward the door.

  “Thanks for coming by. Coordination is good. Especially on this one,” Cammy said with a smile.

  “Coordination you shall have. Now let’s just pray for a conquest.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  “I got another email from Pete Kalani,” Angela said, rushing into Samantha’s office.

  Samantha grabbed the note, quickly scanned it and said, “Good timing. I’m heading down to a meeting in Ken Cosgrove’s office in a few minutes for an update on everything. You can come with me.”

  Angela plopped down on a chair in front of the desk. “Great, I’ve got some time now. By the way, since you were out in Rockville this morning, you missed the senior staff meeting. Guess who wasn’t there?” she asked with a coy smile.

  “Who?”

  “Max Federman.”

  “Why? Is he out of town or something?”

  “Nope. The latest word is that he’s out of a job,” Angela said with a slight sense of triumph in her voice.

  “What happened? Did he have a falling out with the Veep?”

  “From all the gossip in the EOB, sounds like the Veep got word of Max’s tendency to fall all over White House staff. The young, single ones, that is.”

  “And he fired him just as the campaign is heating up?” Samantha asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Let’s just say that the Veep wanted to get him out of here before the press found out and really put the heat on.”

  “Talk about a come-uppance.” Samantha thought about all the runins she’d had with Max the last few weeks and chuckled. “You know, he never propositioned me. Guess he was too busy being ticked off every time I asked for a threat assessment. In fact, he once said I reminded him of a four-year-old in a tutu shouting, ‘Look at me’.”

  “Oh, that’s cold,” Angela said. “Besides, you never do things around here for personal reasons. Your job is protecting the country, for Lord’s sake.”

  “At least that’s how I try to look at it
,” Samantha said. “When I first raised the issue of an EMP, I remember thinking that I didn’t want my memo to be the black box you recover after our economy is shot down by that kind of attack.”

  “Right on. By the way, have you heard anything new about stopping the Kazaks?

  “Nothing so far. I’ve been checking with all the agencies, and I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel yet. Not even a shadow. But we’ll see what Ken has to say.”

  Angela checked her watch. “So what time is your meeting?”

  “Pretty soon. Let me just get my notes together here, and we’ll head downstairs.”

  When the women arrived in Ken’s office, he was seated at his corner conference table and motioned for them to join him.

  “Angela got an email from Pete Kalani,” Samantha said. “Is it okay for her to sit in?”

  “Of course. What did he say?”

  “Well, I sent a reply thanking him for his help, reiterating that we were searching for the ship and would be careful to take care of his friend, just like you asked me to,” Angela said. “And then I got this return email.” She held out the printed copy. “See? He says that he’s traveling in Kazakhstan with Nurlan’s sister, that they don’t have much money left, but they’re trying to get to a small city where she has some relatives. Then he has to figure out a way to get back to the states for his last year at UCLA.”

  Ken read the note and passed it over to Samantha. “So he’s out of money. He doesn’t seem to be asking for money for himself though. Looks like a brave kid to be going through all of this.”

  “Here at the end,” Samantha said, pointing to the last few sentences, “he does talk again about the issue of reparations for the Marshall Island victims. Have we heard back from the Chairman of that committee?”

  “Not yet,” Ken said. “We’ve briefed the Intelligence Committees about the threat, the search for the ship and the agreement we made to protect that one man on board, of course. And naturally we told them about our promise to try and get a reparations bill moving quickly. They were somewhat skeptical about the whole scenario though, saying that there might not be any ship at all, and perhaps it’s all just a play to get the money.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Angela said. “We all heard that phone call. This guy was super serious. I mean, he had all the details. Why in the world wouldn’t they believe him?”

  “Angela,” Ken said in a calming voice. “I know you haven’t been working on national security issues, up to now that is. So you haven’t been privy to all the schemes, tips, threats that parade through this office. Now granted, this one is more specific than the ones we usually get. But sometimes a certain weariness sets in on the Hill when we lay out these things. A lot of them turn out to be hoaxes, of course, and others are handled quite deftly by the FBI or CIA. This one is so broad in terms of figuring out where to look for the culprits that it’s taking an entire Naval Task Force along with a good portion of our Coast Guard to hunt them down. Just imagine what that’s doing to their budgets.”

  Angela listened intently and nodded as he went on. “Now you can figure out how well all of that is going over with the Members who complain about the Pentagon budget on a regular basis. So put that with our demand that they up the ante with money for native people who may not even be voters, well, you get the picture.”

  “Geez!” Angela said with a sigh. “What do we do now?”

  “We keep our eye on the threat.” He turned to Samantha, “What do you have for me today?”

  Samantha handed over a pair of memos. “I had the FBI run background checks on Pete Kalani and his friend, Nurlan. Turns out that they’re both students at UCLA. Just as Pete said. They’ve both been very active in anti-war groups. Well, Nurlan is a member of a group over in Kazakhstan and Pete has his group, the S.A.I.N.T.S. which has been trying to raise the reparations issue for quite some time. Haven’t got much publicity though. Not much traction. He’s never been arrested, and while he seems to talk a good game about hating our government, there’s no record of any personal threats against the president of anything to involve the Secret Service.”

  Ken perused the reports and murmured, “Everything he said pretty much checks out here.”

  “Do we have any updates from the Navy?” Samantha asked.

  “In the latest briefing, Ignatius said that the Navy was focusing their resources on a triangular area in the Pacific. But since there are major shipping lanes all through there, finding one small ship is an almost impossible task. At least we think it’s probably pretty small, compared to most of the container ships and tankers out there. And now there’s a big storm brewing. It’ll make visibility even worse.”

  “When I met with Dr. Talbot this morning, she said she and Hunt were leaving first thing tomorrow to head to the West Coast,” Samantha said.

  “Yes, I know their schedule. There’s a 737 ready for them to board at the first indication that the ship has been sighted.”

  Samantha glanced down at her notes again and asked a question. “Ken, I got to thinking about what kind of ship it might be. I remember Pete said he heard they were getting on a boat at a base on the china coast.”

  “Right,” Ken said “And we’re trying to figure out if it might have been Wusong. We’ve been in touch with their base commander, but he says he knows nothing about it. Same kiss off we got from the Chinese president.”

  “Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s a private contract,” Samantha said. “Maybe the Kazaks cut some deal with a boat builder or an agent or somebody like that, and they simply arranged for a ship to be made available at some little port along the South China Sea. I mean, it could have been anywhere over there.”

  “Yes, I know,” Ken said.

  “But on the other hand, if they put this nuke, or whatever kind of weapon it is, on board along with some sort of launcher, and if their plan is to send it up and create an EMP, then by definition the pulse would knock out all of the ship’s controls, so it wouldn’t be able to get away, right?”

  “Yes, we’ve thought about that,” Ken said. “So that means it could be a much older vessel of some sort, or they took special pains to harden their systems to withstand the pulse.”

  “But if they’ve hardened everything on board, that might make it tougher for Cammy, uh, I mean Dr. Talbot to pull off some sort of preemptive strike. She said she uses frequencies, and while I couldn’t begin to understand what she’s been testing, it does sound like there’s a chance that whatever she does just won’t work on that particular ship.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Ken said. “I’m sure she knows that. It just means that if we do find the damn thing, and if she and Hunt can get there before a launch, she’ll have to use the systems they have on board the 737 and pray that they work. Otherwise, the Kazaks launch a weapon, and then we’ll have to rely on the missile defense interceptors being sent when that sucker is already flying through the air toward San Francisco. And we have to pretend we’re Superman with a bullet hitting a bullet.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  THE PACIFIC

  Huge waves crashed over the bow of the ship. The wind howled sending the fishing trawler up and down like a giant yo-yo. Nurlan clung to a railing on the bridge as the captain shouted orders to the crew.

  “Batten down the loose gear,” he bellowed over the roar. “Tie down those boxes. Rig some lines to hold on to when you’re on deck. Get washed overboard in this gale, we’d never find you.”

  Nurlan wished he’d never found this assignment. He was sick, scared, and stunned by the ferocity of the storm. He’d never seen anything like it. The dark clouds had been gathering since yesterday, but he had no idea they could unleash this kind of turmoil. He didn’t know anything about sailing or ships or any of this. His world was indoors, his head was inside a computer, his experience was land-locked. And here he was in a violent storm, hanging on, afraid to let go to find a life preserver as the captain barked the commands to everyone within ea
r shot.

  How had it come to this? Nurlan had gone to work at the nuclear plant just so he could learn more about their plans and maybe sabotage some tests. And that’s exactly what he did. Or at least, he thought he did. But now, his little experiment had morphed into an international challenge. No, not a challenge. A full-fledged attack. And they were using his idea to stage it. As he felt the guilt wash over him, he watched one crew member slide along the deck and finally grab hold of a line before being swept off in another gigantic wave.

  When they had flown to the China coast, he had entertained ideas about slipping away, escaping this crazy escapade. But the men in charge had kept close watch on everybody. He couldn’t find a way out. And besides, even if he could get away, where would he go? He didn’t have much money, and he had no idea how he’d get to a city and find his way out of the country. And if the Chinese found him, he could be in another kind of trouble. They could accuse him of being a spy. They could throw him in jail. They didn’t take kindly to having uninvited strangers around. He didn’t have a visa. None of them did. Their orders were to land on that remote runway, off-load their equipment, quickly board the ship with all their gear and get moving.

  So here he was, trying to control the nausea, the fear, the feeling of utter helplessness. Then he thought about a conversation he’d had with his supervisor the night before. Nurlan had asked the man how they could make their escape back across the Pacific if they launched the weapon and it set off a shock wave like what had happened back home. Wouldn’t that knock out any electronics we have on board, he had inquired. So how would they make their get-away? The boss had told him that first of all, if they launched the nuke, they wouldn’t need their computers anymore, so they wouldn’t care if those were fried. And as for the ship, it was old, ran on diesel engines, not fancy electronics. And if they lost their GPS, the captain would just use Celestial Nav, a sextant, charts, the stars. He’d take a reading off the North Star and navigate just like Vespucci, Magellan, and Columbus did. Nobody had a GPS in the 15th century, he’d said, and he told Nurlan to stop worrying about everything. But how could he stop, especially now that the ship was lurching again.