"My God," the President muttered, settling the red phone into its cradle. "They did it. The bastards detonated one of them. NSA says their SIGINT capabilities in the Med just went blank. An electromagnetic pulse."
"I don't believe it," Morton Davies declared. Sitting on the edge of his hard chair, the chief of staff looked as incredulous as he felt. "We're tracking their helicopter with one of the AWACS we brought up from Rijad. The minute they set down, we're going to pick them up, rescue Mannheim and any other hostages, and nail the bastards. They know they can't get away, so why…?"
"He'd threatened to nuke the island," Hansen went on, "but I assumed that had to be a bluff. Why in hell would he want to go ahead and do it? It didn't buy him anything at this stage."
Edward Briggs was on a blue phone at the other end of the Situation Room, receiving an intelligence update from Operations in the Pentagon. As he cradled the receiver, he looked down, not sure how to tell Johan Hansen what he had just learned. Mannheim.
"What's the matter, Ed? I don't like that look. What did-?"
"Mr. President." He seemed barely able to form the words. "Our people just got a better handle on… It wasn't Andikythera."
"What?" Hansen jerked his head around, puzzlement in his deep eyes. "What do you mean? Good Christ, not Souda Bay! Surely they didn't-"
"The detonation. Our AWACS flying out of southern Turkey monitored it at around fifteen thousand feet. As best they can tell. They still-"
"What!"
'They say it looked to be about seventy miles out over the eastern Med, in the direction of Cypress. Which is exactly where they were tracking-"
"You mean…" His voice trailed off.
'That's right," Briggs said finally. "They think it was the helicopter. The one they were flying out. An old Sikorsky S-61 series, we believe. It-"
"What are you saying?" Hansen found himself refusing to believe it. 'That those idiots nuked themselves?" What the hell was the Pentagon talking about?… My God. Isaac was-
"Doesn't exactly figure, does it?" Briggs nodded lamely. 'The electromagnetic pulse knocked out all our non-hardened surveillance electronics in the region, but Souda's intel section was hard-wired into our backup SAT-NET and they claim they triangulated it. Everything's sketchy, but that seems to be what happened."
"I can't believe it," Hansen said, running his hands over his face. They were trembling. “The whole situation must have gotten away from him. That's… the only way. It must have been a macabre accident. Christ!"
"A damned ghastly one," Briggs agreed. "But I think you're right."
"It's the only explanation that makes any sense," Hansen went on. "He probably decided to take one of the bombs with him, hoping to try this again, and something went haywire." He suddenly tried a sad smile. "You know, I warned that son of a bitch he didn't know what he was doing, that he'd probably end up blowing himself up. Truthfully, I didn't really think it would actually happen, though." He turned back to Briggs. "The Pakistanis said the weapons they had were about ten or fifteen kilotons. How big is that, Ed, in English?"
"Okay," Briggs said, pausing for effect, "that would be like a medium-sized tactical, I guess." Truthfully he wasn't exactly sure.
"Well," Hansen mused, "I'm still convinced they intended it for Souda Bay. And if they'd succeeded… but as it stands, I guess it was more like a small upper-atmosphere nuclear test. A tactical nuke, you say? The very term is an obscenity. But, you know, NATO had those all over Germany not so long ago, on the sick assumption that the German people couldn't wait to nuke their own cities." After a long moment, during which a thoughtful silence held the room, Hansen continued. "Tell me, Ed. What kind of impact would a weapon like that actually have at that altitude?"
"My guess is the effects will be reasonably contained." He was doing some quick mental calculus. "Okay, if you were directly under it, you'd have been about three miles away, so you'd have taken a shock wave that would have knocked out windows. And maybe produced some flash burns. But we had the region cleared of civilian traffic, so maybe we're okay on that score."
"What about fallout?" Hansen asked.
"Well, at that altitude the radioactive contamination should be mostly trapped in the upper atmosphere and take several days to start settling. By that time, it'll probably be diluted to the point it'll be reasonably minimal. Nothing like Chernobyl. Hell, I don't know the numbers, Mr. President, but then again he was over some fairly open waters. Besides, like I said, we had a quarantine on all civilian air and sea traffic-guess we see now what a good idea that was-so maybe we can be optimistic."
"The bloody fools just committed hara-kiri, and took Isaac with them." He found himself thinking about the warning his aged father had given him that the job of President would age him half a lifetime in four years. He now felt it had happened in two days.
"There's more," Morton Davies said, clicking off a third phone and glancing at the computerized map now being projected on the giant screen at the end of the room. "SatCom's laser-powered rocket did go up. That's all they know for certain, but they think it's going into orbit. Whatever the hell that means."
"What about the Deltas?" Hansen asked finally, remembering all the planning. "And the assault? Did they-?"
"Right. Good question." He beamed. "JSOC Command reports that the Deltas are on the island now and have it secured. They even retrieved the bomb that those bastards were planning to put on SatCom's rocket. They managed to get it removed before the launch."
"How?"
"I haven't heard yet, but at least we can take pride in the fact that this country's antiterrorist capabilities got a full-dress rehearsal. And they were up to the job."
The President nodded gravely, not quite sure what, exactly, had been proved. That America could go in with too little, too late? If so, it was sobering insight.
"All right, Morton, get Caroline in here first thing in the morning. I want her to schedule a television speech for tomorrow night. Prime-time. I don't know what I'll say, other than our Special Forces minimized the loss of life. It's going to sound pretty lame."
"And what about the money? Is that going to get mentioned?"
Hansen laughed. "Not in a million years. That money's going to be traced and retrieved today, or else. The Swiss know when to play ball. And by the way, nobody here knows anything. About any of this. No leaks, or off-the-record briefings. And I mean that. The less said, the better."
"That might apply to the whole episode, if you want my opinion," Davies observed.
"You know, Morton, yes and no." He turned thoughtful. "Maybe some good can come of this disaster after all. It might just be the demonstration we all needed to start the process of putting this nuclear madness to rest, once and for all. The genie managed to slip out of the bottle for a couple of days, and now we see how it can happen. I think it's time we got serious about total disarmament and on-site inspection."
Edward Briggs always knew Hansen was a dreamer, but this time he was going too far. He did not like the idea of America scrapping its nuclear arsenal, even if everybody else did the same. "That's going to mean a lot of wheeling and dealing, Mr. President. It's going to be a hard sell in some quarters."
Right, Hansen thought. And the hardest sell of all was going to be the Pentagon. "Well, dammit, nothing in this world is easy. But this is one move toward sanity that may have just gotten easier, thanks to that idiot on the island. I'm going to rework that speech I've got scheduled for the General Assembly. We lined up the Security Council, including the Permanent Members, for the right reasons once before. I'm going to see if we can't do it again. This time I think we've got an even better reason."