The Viral Epiphany

by Richard McSheehy

  “What do you suggest?” President Cranston asked, almost in a whisper, because he already knew the answer.

  “We need to stop the disease in its tracks, sir. Now. We can’t wait any longer. If the people start fleeing the cities in large numbers it’s all over. I’ve seen the simulations. If we can prevent the people who are already infected from carrying the disease outside of the cities our mathematicians assure me that the smaller towns and rural areas will survive.”

  “Why is that General?”

  “It’s just mathematics, sir. The simulations show that the population density in those locations is insufficient to support successful propagation of the disease.”

  “I see.”

  “Sir, we need to initiate Clean Sweep now. We can’t wait any longer.”

  He knew it was coming, but it was still almost like a physical blow when he heard the words ‘Clean Sweep’. “Stand by, General,” the President said and turned to explain to Captain Andrews and Grace.

  “Clean Sweep is a plan, a last ditch defense that was planned years ago in the event that a biological weapon got out of control.”

  “What does it do?” Grace asked.

  “It’s a code name for the complete cleansing of infected areas using nuclear weapons,” he said quietly. He found he wasn’t able to look at her while he said the words. “Essentially it incinerates the disease organisms. It’s…”

  “What do you mean, Alan?” Grace interrupted in horror. “You mean you want to bomb our own cities? You want to kill our people with nuclear weapons?”

  President Cranston looked at her and saw the incredulity in her eyes. “Yes, Grace. It’s our only option. If we don’t do this, everyone on earth will die from this disease. We have to do this. It’s the only way to save the people.” He looked over at Captain Andrews to see if he understood his logic, but he only saw a stoic expression on the Captain’s face.

  “No!” Grace said, “You can’t do that! What about the people in the cities who don’t have the disease?” She looked at him aghast as she realized he was completely serious. “What about the children?” she pleaded.

  “Grace, I have to. It’s my responsibility. It’s a decision I have to make.”

  “You have to make?” she almost shouted, “You have to make? Alan, who are you to play God? You can’t make this decision!” She looked over at Captain Andrews but she could see immediately that she would receive no support there.

  “Wait, Alan!” she suddenly said as hope dawned on her face. “What about the vaccine we are going to get in Ireland? Why can’t we vaccinate all the people? You don’t have to do this! We can save the people with the vaccine!”

  President Cranston shook his head sadly and said, “They only have a small amount of vaccine, dear. There’s not enough for everyone and even if there was, there is no way to vaccinate everybody in time. I’m sorry, Grace. We’re out of time. It has to be done.”

  “NO!” she screamed so loudly that the men in the control room could hear her.

  President Cranston, however, calmly turned and picked up the phone. “General Baker,” he said, “Commence Operation Clean Sweep immediately!”

  “Yes, sir!” came the reply as he pressed the start button on the console in front of him. “Operation Clean Sweep is now at T minus eight hours and counting.” President Cranston quietly hung up the phone and then turned to see Grace as she sat on the bed weeping uncontrollably.

  Less than five seconds later the communications console in front of Randy lit up again with an incoming FLASH message.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CLASSIFCATION: TOP SECRET (OMEGA)

  PRIORITY: FLASH

  TO: CMDR SSN SEAWOLF

  SUBJECT: ACTION ORDERS AND AUTOMATED TARGETING INFORMATION

  OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP IS NOW IN EFFECT. COUNTDOWN INITIATED AT 0100 HOURS ZULU AT T-8 HOURS. SYNCHRONIZE COUNTDOWN CLOCKS. REPLACE CONVENTIONAL CRUISE MISSILE WARHEADS WITH NUCLEAR WARHEADS. DYNAMIC TARGETING FOR SSN SEAWOLF HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED BY OMEGA COMPUTERS BASED UPON BOAT POSITION, RELEVANT TARGETS, AND TARGETS WITHIN RANGE.

  NOTE: TARGETS ARE CITIES IN EXCESS OF 200,000 POPULATION ONLY.

  CLEAN SWEEP TARGETS FOR SSN SEAWOLF ARE THE FOLLOWING CITIES:

  DUBLIN, IRELAND

  CORK, IRELAND.

  BRIG GENERAL JOHN L BAKER SENDS

  END OF MESSAGE

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Thirty-Six

  The morning sun had given Minot’s eastern sky an encouragingly warm-looking, reddish glow, a color that belied the wind chill of thirty degrees below zero. Most of the residents of the small North Dakota town, once famous for being the hub of Al Capone’s smuggling activities, were awakening to yet another day of dread and perhaps, the terrifying news that the disease had finally reached their town.

  However, about ten miles from the town center, at Minot Air Force Base, the people were feeling a different set of emotions. The men and women of the Air Combat Command’s 91st Space Wing and 5th Bomb Wing had awakened to the chilling wail of the base’s emergency alert sirens. They struggled, most still half asleep, to get their uniforms on as quickly as possible and then, running outside into the breathtakingly cold air, they raced on foot or in their cars to their duty stations. The entire base was garishly lit up in the glare of bright, yellow-white floodlights, while blue and red reflections of silently flashing lights pulsated chaotically from the cold walls of the buildings.

  The sodium vapor lights that towered above the flightline revealed an array of more than thirty B-52H Stratofortress long-range bombers, each being prepared for takeoff. The first aircraft in line, painted in green and brown camouflage colors, was surrounded by several support trucks, two auxiliary power carts, and several tractors that were attached to heavy duty trailers. Each of the trailers contained either two air-launched cruise missiles or a single B-61 Mod 11 nuclear bomb. On the side of the fuselage, below the cockpit, was a large painting of a beautiful, nude woman on a charging black horse. She was holding a long flaming sword high over her head while her long blond hair streamed behind her. Beneath the picture, written in bold Gothic-looking letters, was the name of the plane, Valkyrie.

  Air Force Captain Pete “Skyhawk” Jeffries was sitting in the left seat in the cockpit of the Valkyrie as it was being prepared for flight. His radar navigator, Joe “Onions” Romer, had finished supervising the loading of their weapons onto the plane and had now taken a seat behind Captain Jeffries to go over the list of munitions they were taking on board.

  “OK, sir. Here’s what we have today,” he said as he looked down at his checklist, “We’ve got all the cruise missiles we can carry: twelve ALCMs to be slung on the wing pods, twenty-two ACMs inside, and, let’s see, for bombs, we have a full load of eight B-61 Mod 11 nukes. Oh, and the cruise missiles are all nukes too.”

  “Roger. Can you confirm for me that the armaments are actually live nuclear weapons and not dummy warheads?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s confirmed. All warheads are live and ready to go.”

  “Thanks, Onions” he said. Then he looked over at the mission computer display for a few seconds and saw that the countdown clock now read 3 HRS 58 MIN 33 SEC. He turned to his co-pilot, Ted “Flash” Gordon. “It’s past T minus four hours, Flash. Time to have a look at the targeting information. Go ahead and open the envelope.”

  “Flash” Gordon picked up the red and white striped package that was marked TOP SECRET in large black letters, pulled out the targeting orders that were marked Operation Clean Sweep, and began reading to himself. After about two minutes he turned to Captain Jeffries with a puzzled look on his face.

  “Hey, Captain, I’ve never seen anything like this before. It says here that our targets will be dynamically assigned by some computer called “Omega”.

  “What?”


  “Yeah! It says we need to type the code that’s printed here into the mission computer and then the mission computer will display our targets. It says that targets are being assigned based upon our location and up to date assessments of possible targets. What the hell does that mean?”

  They were interrupted by a voice in their headsets. “Excuse me sir, this is the ground weapons officer. Can you send your radar navigator out here for a minute? I need him to approve the weapon load.”

  “Roger. Hey Onions can you go out and help the weapons guy for a few minutes? It sounds like you need to sign some paperwork.” Captain Jeffries said.

  “Sure thing, sir” he said. Onions left his seat behind the captain and went through the fuselage to the exit door.

  “OK,” ‘Flash’ Gordon said, “I’ll just type in the code they have here. Let’s see, CDGKHTE26F.” He typed the symbols in and they waited for a few seconds as the mission computer display cleared and then a moment later the men began reading the targeting information:

  PROJECT OMEGA

  OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP

  TARGETING ORDER FOR B-52H AIRCRAFT TAIL NUMBER 1404, 5TH BOMB WING, AIR COMBAT COMMAND. PRIMARY TARGET IS CITY OF LOS ANGELES AND SURROUNDING AREA. SECONDARY TARGET IS SAN FRANCISCO AND SURROUNDING AREA. MUNITION ALLOCATION AND LOCATION USAGE DOWNLOADED TO RADAR NAVIGATOR/BOMBARDIER COMPUTER. END OF TARGETING ORDER.

  “What the hell?” Captain Jeffries said, “Are they kidding? We’re going to bomb Los Angeles?”

  His copilot sat speechless for several seconds after he read the message. Then he said, “It has to be that Asian Fever thing, sir. I read the background info on Clean Sweep. It’s a doomsday program that gets executed when all else fails against some kind of biological attack. The write up says it will destroy any microorganisms and make the earth safe again for human life.”

  Captain Jeffries nodded. “I know, Flash, I read the background info too. But – bomb Los Angeles? Do they really expect us to bomb our own people?”

  “Sir, it’s our orders. Besides the people who give these orders have a lot more information than we do, and they’re a lot smarter too. There’s nothing we can do but follow orders now.”

  “But all those innocent people!”

  “I know, but if these guys at Omega think there’s no hope and that this is the only solution…I don’t know. Those people, poor souls, there’s no hope for them. They’re lost, sir. The experts at Omega must be right; otherwise, we wouldn’t have these orders! The President had to have given his approval to use nuclear weapons, sir.”

  Captain Jeffries said nothing but he looked straight out the windshield of the bomber for a few minutes. He watched the sky slowly change from dark purple to bright red as the sun rose in front of them. The first hint of blue began to appear in the sky. Then he looked over at Ted and said, “I guess you’re right.” He looked at the countdown clock again. It read T-3:46:03. “We need to get going. Flying time to L.A. must be about three hours.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll check if the others are ready,” Ted said and then held his microphone closer to his mouth as he prepared to check with the rest of the crew.

  “Wait!” Captain Jeffries suddenly shouted, “Holy shit!”

  “What?”

  “Onions!”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s here on temporary duty, right?”

  “Yeah, I think he is.”

  “From Los Angeles! He told me he has a wife and daughter there! We can’t ask him to be the guy who drops the bomb on his family!”

  “Oh crap,” the copilot said, “You’re right. Wait, let me call the navigator.” He switched channels on his headset and then called the navigator, “Hey NAV, you there?”

  “Yes, sir” he replied, “I’m here. What’s up?”

  “Are you cross trained at the radar navigator position?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Where you from, NAV?”

  “What? I’m from Boston. Why?” Ted turned and gave a thumbs up to Captain Jeffries.

  “OK. Good. You’ll have to do two jobs today,” he said, “Onions won’t be coming with us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Minutes later, Joe “Onions” Romer had finished signing the release documents for the weapons that had been loaded on the aircraft. As he was preparing to reboard the B-52 an Air Force police vehicle raced up to the plane with all of its lights flashing and two armed men quickly stepped out and approached the radar navigator.

  “Are you Lieutenant Romer?” one of them asked.

  “Yes, I am. Listen, if this is about that speeding ticket, I was going to pay that last week, really.”

  “Sir, you won’t be flying on this aircraft,” one of the policemen replied. “We have new orders for you,” he said and, taking him by the elbow, led him to the police truck.

  Five minutes later the doors to the Stratofortress bomber were closed and the eight T-33 jet engines started. As Captain Jeffries taxied the plane towards the runway the sun rose above the horizon and the clear morning light revealed a frozen, featureless landscape covered in old, slightly brownish-gray, snow. The orange, thirty mile per hour, windsock at the end of the runway was aligned straight with the runway. The Valkyrie slowed as it neared the end of the taxiway; then it turned onto the runway and stopped. He could see the long line of B-52s that had been behind him and were now waiting for their turn to take off.

  “OK,” he said to his co-pilot, checklist complete?”

  “Checklist complete, sir.”

  “Roger, Minot tower, Valkyrie is ready for takeoff.”

  “Valkyrie cleared for takeoff,” came the instant reply.”

  “Roger, cleared for takeoff,” he said as he pushed the throttles forward to full power. Huge clouds of black smoke poured from each of the engines as they roared to life and the entire airframe began to shake from side to side.

  “We’re at full power,” his copilot said.

  “Minot tower, Valkyrie is rolling,” he said as the plane began to move down the runway. A minute later it had lifted off, it’s wings seemingly outstretched like a gigantic bird of prey, in that menacing, slightly nose down attitude that is characteristic of the B-52. It was undoubtedly the most horrific Valkyrie that had ever taken to the air in search of lost souls.

  Thirty-Seven

  T – 2 Hours.

  The full moon cast a clear, pale light on the cold and black waves of the Celtic Sea as the SSN Seawolf came up to periscope depth, south of Galley Head light on the south coast of Ireland. Charlie Murray, the Seawolf’s navigator, sat at the control room’s situational awareness display and watched as the first video pictures came in and were displayed on the VISIRO (Visible with Infrared Overlay) integrated surveillance system. The submarine was continuing to slice through the water at emergency speed as it passed Clonakilty Bay and also, unknown to the crew, the wreck of the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. Charlie stared intently at the scene as the Seawolf passed. The remains of the ill-fated boat couldn’t be discerned in the moon shadows of the rocky coast of Dunowen Head, but suddenly Charlie shivered. He didn’t feel cold, nor was he afraid. He didn’t know why he shivered.

  He shook his head. This is definitely my last voyage, he said to himself as he looked down to his navigation map. I’m too old for this. He looked over, from the corner of his eye, at the other crewmembers who were manning their positions at the console. Look at them, he thought. They’re all kids, listening to rock music while they’re pushing their buttons. They’re not sailors like us in the old days. They don’t feel it – the sea, the mysteries, all the…what did Melville call it in Moby Dick? Loomings. Yeah…that’s what these kids don’t feel - loomings.

  Charlie’s next checkpoint on his map was the Old Head of Kinsale, and, in accordance with the orders of Captain Andrews, he was maintaining a course that kept the boat a safe distance off the Irish coast. It wasn’t long before the bright beacon of the lighthouse appeared on the periscope display. The submarine’s comput
er calculated a range of five miles to the light. Charlie looked back at the Captain to see if he was watching the display but he seemed to be absorbed in conversation with another member of the control room crew. He thought he heard them say something about target locations and something called Clean Sweep. The Captain’s almost as bad as the kids, he thought, he doesn’t even know where we are.

  A few minutes later Charlie closed his eyes for a few moments and quietly said a short prayer as the Seawolf glided over the slowly disintegrating remains of the Cunard liner Lusitania. It had sunk just below them on May 7, 1915 after being torpedoed by a German U-Boat with the loss of 1,198 lives. Local fishing boats had brought the few passengers who had survived to Cobh. Charlie opened his eyes and looked around to see if anyone had observed him, but no one had noticed, not even Captain Andrews who was still intently discussing timelines and countdowns. It seemed to Charlie that the Captain was in a great hurry to get to Cork and then get out again as fast as possible.

  “How long before we get to Cork?” Captain Andrews said a few moments later as he placed his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. He had been looking at the VISIRO display as he asked the question, but he then turned towards Charlie to hear his reply.

  Charlie pointed to his map. “At this speed we’ll be passing Robert’s Head within twenty minutes, Captain. I assume you’ll want to enter Cork Harbor and tie up at the deepwater anchorage at Cobh. Is that right?”

  Captain Andrews studied the map for a few minutes before replying. “I don’t like the look of the harbor entrance, Charlie. It’s pretty narrow and easily patrolled. It could even be easily blocked. We need to be able to get out fast. What are our other options besides Cobh?”

  “Well, there is the outer anchorage over here at Roche’s Point, just outside the harbor entrance,” Charlie said pointing to the map. “But it’s definitely not the most auspicious place to anchor.”