by Joe Buff
"So?"
"Sulfur's in acetylcholine, the human body's neurotransmitter. It's also found in cystine, a key amino acid. Disulfide bonds in cystine form a polypeptide, collagen, the basic building block for our connective tissues."
"So?"
Ilse wiped a loose strand of hair back from her forehead, then looked right at Jeffrey. "If something eats your sulfur, your brain stops working and your muscles turn to goo."
Jeffrey frowned. "How do we defend against it?"
"Archaea's such a simple life-form our immune systems don't respond, so no vaccination's possible. A hybrid could be designed to spread through water, soil, the air, and through any intermediate host or carcass, making it appallingly contagious in a room-temperature nitrogen-oxygen environment."
"Antibiotics?" Jeffrey said.
"Archaea are not bacteria, which lack internal organelles, and they have a different cell wall chemistry, so once they're in your body, drugs won't work. Tetracycline helps conserve the collagen — that's one of its side effects — but not enough to save you."
"And they must think a sterilizing autoclave's some kind of health spa," Jeffrey said.
"That's right," Ilse said, "they're so-called extremophiles. Archaea thrive at temperatures of a thousand Fahrenheit, they're found at pressures of a thousand atmospheres or more, they can be resistant to alkalis like bleach, and they simply love acid, so there's no good way to decontaminate."
Lieutenant Clayton leaned forward. Like Captain Wilson, he was black — African American, Ilse reminded herself. Even through his uniform she could see he had a perfect swimmer's body. He looked almost thirty, more mature than Lieutenant Sessions somehow, must be more time in grade. To Ilse this reemphasized the importance of the mission — a lieutenant in the navy equaled a captain in the army.
"We have to stop this at the source," Clayton said. "There's evidence they'll soon disperse the R&D, then go into mass production. They use blackout curtains at the lab, of course, and carpooling to save gas, but we can still tell that the research staff's been working very late, like they're on the verge of a breakthrough. There's just one thing we know will do the job. An atomic demolition."
"You're taking in the warhead from one of our Mark 88s?" Jeffrey said. "You didn't bring your own — I'd have seen the guards and paperwork."
"We're getting a bit ahead of ourselves now," Wilson said. He looked at his watch, then asked the steward to send a messenger to fetch COB and the navigator.
"The navigator must be running late," Jeffrey said, "preparing his part of the briefing." Wilson nodded. He poured himself another cup of coffee, then sat back. Ilse saw this was some kind of signal. People relaxed again.
"This infiltration should be stimulating," Jeffrey said, reaching for a cookie. "The facilities around Durban are virtually impregnable."
"That's where we like to be," Clayton said.
"We're looking at interlocking arcs of fire," Jeffrey said. "Nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, supersonic, atop the skyscrapers downtown and on the bluff outside the bay. More launch points on the escarpments up and down the coast, and on the top floors of those big resort hotels, the ones they haven't knocked down to make beach landing obstacles. Constant ASW patrols, using every type of sensor. And minefields, channeled into local SOSUS bottom-listening nets."
Captain Wilson nodded. "Then there's the bigger picture, the Axis hostage strategy. Using innocent people as their shield, which makes it hard for us to act decisively at every level everywhere. They play to Third World fence-sitters — that if we nuke 'em, it's our fault."
"This two-phase coup was brilliant," Shajo Clayton said. "We fell for it at every step."
"South African reactionaries stage a take-over," Jeffrey said. "They claim they're liberating the country, for God's sake, from malicious outside interference. They declare martial law, then put down the inevitable riots with modern nonlethal weapons. They say it's the only way to stop the social chaos— crime, terrorism, and AIDS — all forced on them by ending their apartheid, a system they claim worked."
"They fortify the Prince Edward Islands," Clayton said, "their own territory, halfway between Cape Town and Antarctica. The U.N. orders trade embargoes, enforced by a blockade. In retaliation the Boers close the Horn of Africa to what they call hostile shipping. The busiest maritime choke point in the world."
"They sink some American and British merchant ships," Jeffrey said, "using highexplosive rounds. So NATO mobilizes, like in the Gulf War and with Yugoslavia. Coalition forces drain from Europe and put to sea, where all those tanks and troops are vulnerable as hell."
"But due to pacifist demonstrations, the German deployment lags," Clayton said. " Except Namibia, the colony they lost in World War I, just to South Africa's northwest. There they go in first and meet no Boer opposition."
"Then there's the Berlin Putsch," Jeffrey said. "And then they launch the European ground war. Nuking Poland's how they got the French to cave."
"Restoring the kaiser," Wilson said. "Finishing the work of Bismarck. Giving all of Europe the unity it needs, without all the disorder … A new German reawakening, my ass."
"But the U.S. and U.K. and Germany were big financial allies," Ilse said.
"Ilse," Commodore Morse broke in, "in 1914 the U.K. and Germany were each other's foremost trading partners. That didn't stop the slaughter then."
"It was a dangerous myth," Jeffrey said, "to think Germany needed another recession to go on the warpath again. In 1914 they were very prosperous, and that gave them ideas." Morse nodded. "The underlying enmities go back a century or more."
"That's true," Ilse said. "The old-line Boers hate the British, starting when you took Cape Town in 1795. Shoving them aside, plundering their natural resources, building concentration camps when they resisted. They'll fight you very hard, like in the old days. They think God's on their side."
The conversation paused. Ilse glanced at the oil painting hanging on the wardroom bulkhead, the corvette HMS Challenger in full sail, the odd fittings at her stern for the special trawls and dredges. Eighteen seventy-two, Ilse told herself, the same year that the Franco-Prussian War was winding down. The same time as the diamond rush in Kimberley was booming, and the gold rush in Transvaal — ten years before the first of those two Anglo-Boer wars.
"While we're waiting for the others," Jeffrey said, "let's take a rest room break."
* * *
"Thanks for letting me go first," Ilse said after everyone got back. "I don't mean to be an inconvenience."
"We do have women riders now and then," Jeffrey said. "Contractor representatives, scientists, journalists … and congresswomen of course."
"Crew members?"
"Maybe someday." Jeffrey shrugged.
The navigator, Lieutenant Monaghan, arrived. COB showed up a moment later. COB had to lean against the sideboard — the bench seats around the wardroom table were completely full. The steward left and closed the door into the little pantry.
"Back to work," Clayton said with relish. At the slightest movement of his fingers, Ilse noticed, muscles rippled on his arms.
"Where are all your men?" she said while Monaghan wired his laptop to the flat-screen wardroom monitor.
"Squashed in a compartment forward," Clayton said. "You'll meet them soon. Right now they're sharpening their combat knives, holding high-stakes one-arm pushup contests, and practicing garroting one another."
"We can carry up to fifty SEALs," Jeffrey said, "in the torpedo room, but for that we need to off-load weapons."
Clayton smiled ferally. "One boat team's enough for what we have to do." Then he added, "Een boot groep is genoeg voor wat wij mooten doe," which was the same in Afrikaans.
"You're fluent," Ilse said, surprised but then delighted.
"I practice all the time," Clayton said, switching back to English. "I also speak six native tongues from that part of the world."
"I missed something," COB said. "The CO told me we're hitting a bioweapons
plant. Miss Reebeck, what's your role?"
"My job's to quickly spot the key lab notes and records, so we can bring them out, and to eyeball their progress and approach."
"You're an expert in the subject?" COB said.
"That's how I got my Ph.D., peaceful archaea applications, industrial uses of their enzymes, hyperthermozymes, as catalysts for chemical reactions."
"Are you grabbing any samples?" COB said.
"That's much too dangerous," Wilson said.
"To find some way to fight it," Ilse said, "we need their recipe, the genetic code and how they engineered it. We want the data, not the bug."
"Once weaponized," Clayton said, "there'd be no lower limit to this stuff's mass and bulk, unlike a briefcase atom bomb. No corresponding close-range gamma ray signature either, to be picked up at border crossings or shipping nodes. You could transport archaea dried — an aerosol can, a water-soluble lipstick, almost anything would do, and sniffer K-9s would be useless. Chemical weapons and biotoxins don't reproduce. Archaea does."
"And with bio warfare," Jeffrey said, "in place of Axis H-bombs, say, our infrastructure's left intact across the battle space or continental U.S … Plunder, and Lebensraum — living room."
Sessions raised his hand. "I have a stupid question. Once it's been let loose, what stops this thing from wiping out the world? You know, including all the Germans and the Boers?"
"Archaea can multiply by budding like amoeba," Ilse said, "or sexually. We expect the killer strain's design builds in a generational life-span, after which the colony dies out. These days that's nothing special, from research on aging and recombinant DNA."
"What about this A-bomb we'll be using?" Jeffrey said.
"We'll destroy the lab by setting off the warhead in an enemy missile," Clayton said. " There's one dug in right there next to the Sharks Board. It'll look just like an accident, or sabotage within. The blast itself will hide our tracks. Three kilotons, we think."
"The zone of total sterilization," Ilse said, "the fireball and just beyond, would extend about a thousand feet across."
Jeffrey inhaled deeply. "Okay. And that's why you need a Boer bomb. A discrepant fallout isotope mix would show we'd brought in ours … But I thought they couldn't go off by mistake — the safety interlocks and codes."
"We only need the physics package," Clayton said.
"You're bringing detonator gear," Jeffrey said. Ilse saw him start to grin as comprehension dawned.
"Cool, huh?" Clayton said. "That's how we'll fire the krytron switches, bypass their arming hardware altogether. They use a lightweight uranium implosion design now, by the way, well beyond South Africa's crude gun bombs in the eighties. With new duallaser refinement methods, U-235's a lot easier to work with than plutonium … I'm an expert in nuclear demolitions."
"If all this works," Wilson said, "there'll be a crucial bonus for us. The Boer regime will start a witch-hunt."
"Another witch-hunt, Captain?" Jeffrey said.
"Public hangings get habit-forming," Clayton said. "We saw that with the Nazis toward the end."
"The Joint Chiefs," Wilson said, "hope the Boers'll think someone on the inside set off the bomb long-distance, through their automated command and control net. They'll purge their senior systems staff, probably, even if they only think there might have been some treason."
"Their systems group has been too tight," Jeffrey said.
Wilson nodded. "But we have moles, I've been informed, less senior people waiting in the wings. Freedom fighters like Ilse, ready to move up."
"That might give us a way in, in the future," Clayton said. "Information warfare at its best."
"A back door to a landing," Jeffrey said, "airborne and on the coast."
"This raid's a big first step to that," Wilson said. "You all can see how critical this is. We absolutely have to get it right."
"We're good to go," Clayton said. "Commander Fuller, we'll work up with you and Ilse while Challenger makes transit. We have a few new tricks since you were with the teams."
"I can just imagine," Jeffrey said.
Wilson turned to Monaghan. "Last part of the briefing. Navigator, you're on." Lieutenant Monaghan tapped some keys. A map of southern Africa came on the screen.
"I'll start with the basics for clarity. Durban's a major port, fronting the Indian Ocean. It can handle large oil tankers, up to eight hundred feet. Bigger ones moor outside and pump their cargo through a floating terminal southwest of the entrance channel."
"The harbor's artificial, isn't it?" Jeffrey said.
"The Bay of Natal," Monaghan said, "nestled behind a bluff along a promontory, was dredged years ago. Now the bluff, two hundred and fifty feet high, acts as a breakwater to south and east. Durban's a major city, an important commercial center."
"And it's their leading submarine base," Jeffrey said.
"That's correct," Monaghan said. "Back under the old Union, First Apartheid, their navy serviced diesel boats at piers on Salisbury Island, inside the port. That continued with the Republic, the post-racist democracy regime."
"With all the troubles of the last few years," Jeffrey said, "like India and Pakistan, North Korea and Japan, they dug into the bluff, then reinforced it from below with layered composite armor, to stop ground-penetrator rounds."
"That's where their subs go now," Sessions said.
"Yup," Jeffrey said. "Good cover, even from tactical atomic weapons. A little Cheyenne Mountain."
"The advantage of Durban to the South Africans," Monaghan said, "is the harbor mouth is very narrow, only two hundred and fifty yards from pier to breakwater, and the continental shelf there drops off quickly. The thirty-fathom curve is barely a mile offshore. Submarines can stay deep coming in or out, even go into the bluff submerged, thanks to the latest excavations."
"The iron oxide they keep sprinkling stops our long-range LIDAR scans," Jeffrey said. " Rust. Now it's a weapon."
"It causes phytoplankton blooms," Ilse said. "The water's surface transparency drops to almost zero."
Monaghan called up another map, the Durban coast.
"Another problem is the winds, which affect the distribution of the fallout. The shoreline here for many miles is straight, except for minor bays and headlands, and runs along a bearing north-northeast. Ninety percent of the time the wind blows up or down the coast; the rest, it usually blows inland."
"That whole coastline's heavily populated," Commodore Morse said.
"That's true," Ilse said. "It was a big resort attraction before the war, with perfect beaches and lots of coral reefs. Swimming and surfing, diving, golf, nature preserves, everything."
"Sounds like Hawaii," Jeffrey said.
"Yes," Ilse said, "except there's even more to do. Umhlanga Rocks was part of that. Tourism was a growth industry for us."
"It might someday be again," Morse said. "If―"
Monaghan went on. "Inland lie more suburbs of Durban, with millions of black South Africans and close to a million minorities of Indian descent. Fallout from a nuclear blast, of any size, is a serious concern."
"That's why the weather factor's crucial," Wilson said. "We have a window coming up in which the winds will blow offshore, because a major storm is on the way. There was a big convoy-versus-wolf-pack battle two days ago, with heavy use of atomic warheads by both sides. That created a cyclonic depression in the South Atlantic Ocean, in an area that's almost always calm."
"The winds and lofted moisture from the fireballs got things started," Monaghan said. " They formed the vortex, one that's especially intense. The result was a true man-made hurricane, as the sun pumped in more energy. Now it's drifting east across South Africa."
"Mind-boggling," Jeffrey said.
"Fortunately," Monaghan said, "most of the fallout came down at sea. Our arrival at Durban is timed for the few hours when this disturbance passes through, blowing itself out. Heavy precipitation is expected then, with — most importantly — winds to south or east."
&nb
sp; "And built-up ground moisture," Clayton said, "plus rain and occluded skies. All of which should help limit collateral damage outside the lab itself."
"There's just one thing, though," Jeffrey said. "They'll know about the weather too. They might be on alert, all up and down the coast."
"We're counting on that," Clayton said. "Stricter curfew means less chance of witnesses, and more of the sentries will be outside where we can get to them. Few bystanders if any in line of sight of the thermal pulse, and their precautions against the storm should hold down blast-wind drag force injuries."
Captain Wilson made eye contact around the room. "The team goes in at night four days from now."
"If we make top quiet speed to start with," Monaghan said, "then slow as we draw near, we'll just be in position to lock out the SEALs on time."
"We'll need to get some updates," Jeffrey said, "particularly on the weather." Wilson shook his head. "Not if that would compromise our hard-won stealth. If we're lucky, the Axis think we're dead, killed by those 212 boats."
"But wouldn't there be wreckage on the surface?" Ilse said.
"All that floated up from Thresher was a rubber glove," Jeffrey said.
"What about your own headquarters?" Ilse said. "Won't they be worried?" Jeffrey smiled. "They'll know we're okay when they see our flaming datum, the mushroom cloud at Umhlanga Rocks."
CHAPTER 5
ABOARD VOORTREKKER
Something jarred Van Gelder wide-awake. He tried to move but couldn't. He saw he was restrained in bed, on oxygen and packed in ice. He squinted but his vision was too blurred, and it made his splitting headache worse. He thought this was his cabin, on Voortrekker. His mouth was dry. He felt so hot. There was an intravenous in each arm. He sensed more than heard the next concussion. It shook his bones and made an ice bag fall onto the deck. Someone entered.
"Just stay like this, please, sir," the sweating first-aid corpsman said. Van Gelder tried to speak. It sounded like a croak. The corpsman took a washcloth from a bucket of cold water, then squeezed it out to drip some on Van Gelder's lips and tongue, holding the oxygen mask aside for just a moment.