‘Right,’ I said knowingly, only in truth I now had some sympathy for the woman I’d heard had been told by a motor mechanic that the halogen fluid in her headlights needed topping up. I went back to the nuke porn going on in my peep slot. The W80 really was small, maybe thirty inches in length with a diameter of around twelve inches. Yeah, a country mailbox-sized bulk milk can.
‘How much does it weigh?’ I asked the colonel.
‘Two hundred and ninety pounds. It’s a two-stage radiation implosion thermonuclear weapon. The bomb you see there was once loaded into a BGM-109 Tomahawk air-launched cruise missile. It would’ve been carried by a Buff.’
A Buff – short for big ugly fat fucker – was the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber, the backbone of our nuclear detterence since its introduction to service in 1955 and still on the frontlines of freedom. The aircraft had all the beauty of a bull shark in a plastic wading pool.
‘The Buff on the ramp got anything to do with Area Two?’ I asked.
‘No, there are Red Flag exercises starting here in a couple of days time. I’d say it has something to do with that,’ said Challis.
‘Presumably, sir, B-52s have crashed while carrying nuclear weapons over the years?’ my partner asked.
‘There have been plenty of B-52 incidents, but none involving the W80.’
‘What about accidental detonation?’ I asked.
‘It’s never happened. The W80 is as stable as they come. Loaded onto Tomahawks, unless you have the launch and release codes – that’s four sets of codes changed on a daily basis, entered simultaneously by two different people into the launch console, which is only attached moments before launch – nothing will happen.’
‘What about the high explosives that crush the plutonium core and detonate the bomb? Couldn’t a fire set them off? Could one of those bombs be loaded, say, into an aircraft and used 9/11-style?’
‘Hmm, imaginative, Mr Cooper,’ said Challis. ‘But the scenario you suggest wouldn’t – couldn’t – work. Let me give you a bit of background . . . The W80 is a Teller–Ulam design, named for Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, who developed it for the United States back in ’51. They created an infallible, elegant design where high-explosive lenses merely initiate the chain reaction in a first stage, which is itself really just the primer for the secondary stage. More specifically, the high-explosive lenses detonate and compress a core comprised of uranium-238, tritium gas and a hollow sphere of plutonium and uranium-235, so that a fission reaction results. It’s this fission reaction that triggers the fusion reaction in the second stage – basically a plutonium sparkplug encased in lithium-6 deuteride and uranium-238 – by a process called radiation implosion.’
There was that word – trigger. I wondered whether I should be taking notes and whether I could ask him to start again at ‘Hmm, imaginative . . .’
‘In other words, the W80 is probably the safest bomb in our arsenal,’ he continued. ‘Getting back to those lenses around the first-stage core. They utilize IHE, or insensitive high explosives, which are highly resistant to cooking off in a fire, or detonation due to mechanical shock. They’ll melt or burn before they explode. Only one person on earth can cause launch and detonation of that weapon, and that’s the President of the United States.’
Ten minutes later, we were back in the colonel’s SUV being tailed by Sailor and Nagel. And not long after that, after more code entering, card swiping and wanding, we were standing in another hardened bunker, Munitions Control – the ‘nerve center’, according to Challis – looking at enlisted folk at consoles quietly watching technicians maintaining weapons, or viewing the interiors of empty igloos where, as the colonel had correctly said, there was nothing to see. The order of the day seemed to be everyone watching everyone else, even though both the watchers and the watched had been especially verified loyal to the core.
After the quiet vigilance of Munitions Control, Colonel Challis drove Petinski and me back to the HQ building, wished us the best of luck in our new roles at Air Force Materiel Command, and turned us over to Jones for out-processing. After signing documents swearing never to reveal anything to anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances, unless we wanted to be sat on by the full weight of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, our red badges were collected and Jones turned us over to Sergeant Burton, who escorted us in silence to our rental with Sailor and Nagel in tow.
Burton motioned Sailor into the back of our vehicle, and bid us good day. He then nodded at Nagel, and she tailed us back to the guard shack. After another search of our persons and the vehicle, which had been sitting outside the MUNS building all this time, we were free to leave, and a technical sergeant armed with an M4 carbine waved us through the shack and out into the main base area.
Leaving Area Two, I felt like I’d just come from a high-security prison where the world’s most dangerous criminals had been doped to the eyeballs but could at any moment break through their torpor and erupt into unspeakable and unstoppable violence.
I shivered involuntarily even though the AC had yet to bring the car’s interior temperature much below broil. ‘Too early for a drink?’ I asked Petinski.
‘That was probably the creepiest experience of my life,’ she said. ‘The hair is still up on the back of my neck.’
‘At least we know who our prime suspect is,’ I said.
‘Challis?’ she asked.
‘No, the President of the United States.’
*
‘There’s this little bar I know,’ I said after driving a few moments in silence.
‘If you mean Olds Bar, I don’t think it’s a good idea.’ Petinski massaged the back of her neck. ‘We need somewhere we can talk.’
The bar at Nellis was named for Robin Olds, a triple ace with sixteen kills collected during World War II and the Vietnam War. If the Air Force fighter jocks had a Mecca, Olds Bar was probably it. The place also had two other things going for it: they poured single malt there, and it was closer than any other bar. But maybe she was right – privacy was paramount. ‘I know another place.’
‘Is it a place we can talk?’
‘As long as it doesn’t get in the way.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of drinking.’
‘You’re in the driver’s seat, Cooper.’ Petinski rolled her head from side to side and repositioned the AC vent on her face.
This Area Two tour was all about making me realize fast that we were dealing with a conspiracy. The theft couldn’t have been the work of a lone nutbag. It was a long-term operation that must have involved – among others – bomb handlers, maintenance personnel, munitions controllers, base security, squadron HQ, and people who could recode military grade software. We’d been cored from the inside out, not unlike the way termites work their way through a house. They leave it looking sturdy enough until you walk in one day, carrying a couple of cases of beer, and suddenly you’re through the floorboards.
‘Our problem is,’ Petinski continued, ‘given all the checks, procedures and security, what’s happened is impossible.’
‘Maybe believing it’s impossible is what made it possible,’ I said, thinking on the run.
‘You care to explain that?’
I was afraid she’d say that. ‘Well, it has to start with the loyalty tests. Those will definitely have right and wrong answers.’ Actually, the more I thought about this, the more I thought I might have stumbled onto something.
‘So?’
‘You don’t think candidates could be schooled to score high?’
‘It’s not just the tests. What about their family, next of kin, former employers? The background checks run deep.’
‘When there are millions of dollars at stake, arrangements can’t be made? Nothing’s impossible, especially if the stakes are worth it.’
Petinski let the cool air continue to work on her face and neck. Eventually she said, ‘If you’re right and people have been schooled, it’s possible that consistencies in test answers mig
ht flag potential conspirators . . . I’ll pass it on.’
Did I just get a pat on the head?
Security at the main gate ignored us, checking only what came in. I turned onto East Craig Road and picked up the signs to the Las Vegas freeway.
‘Oh, I forgot to mention we’re on a red-eye at ten o’clock tonight,’ Petinski said.
‘Where are we going?’ By the calculations of my superiors, we’ve got nine days left. Now that I had some idea of what was to be delivered and triggered, nine days didn’t seem like a whole lot of time.
‘Rio. Benicio von Weiss is under a watch order.’
‘Who’s doing the watching?’
‘Local authorities, CIA and MI6.’
‘The Brits? He steal a nuke from them, too?’
‘No, they want him for passport violations.’
I snorted. ‘The guy forget to collect a stamp?’
Petinski shrugged. ‘Al Capone went down for tax evasion.’
‘Hitting von Weiss with passport violations is like putting Jeffrey Dahmer away for unpaid parking fines. Here’s a suggestion, why don’t we just send in the Marines if we know where he is?’
‘Brazil’s not our country.’
‘It’s not?’
‘O Magnifico is a cool customer. We’ll get nothing—’
‘O Magnifico?’
‘That’s what von Weiss’s people call him.’
‘Sounds like a circus trapeze artist.’
‘As I was saying, Cooper, we’ll get nothing from von Weiss. He’s been in the weapons business a long time and he knows all the tricks. I want to concentrate on locating Randy. Find him and we’ll get some solid clues about where the weapon is, and perhaps its intended use. Once we get a sniff of the W80 we can decide what to do with von Weiss.’
‘We don’t have a lot of time left. Why waste it hunting for someone who might be dead?’
‘Randy’s alive.’
‘Despite what I said to Alabama, we don’t know that – not for certain.’
‘The profile on von Weiss tells us that if he killed someone he believed was a US government agent, he’d find a way to brag about it. In short, we think we’d know by now if Randy was dead.’
I wasn’t so sure about Petinski’s plan. Calling in the 82nd Airborne to secure the suspect so that we could ask him about the warhead with an M4’s flash suppressor occupying one of his nostrils seemed the option more likely to yield positive results quickly.
I drove us back to the Strip and told Petinski about Shadow Bar. She wanted to pack and said she’d meet me there in forty minutes.
*
Petinski walked in twenty minutes late, by which time I was on my third Maker’s Mark with rocks. It was early, barely seven. The evening crowd was still at least thirty minutes away. The dancing shadows, dressed in small tank tops and pleated ultra minis, were doing their best to mesmerize and by the second Maker’s they were succeeding with me.
‘Why am I not surprised?’ said Petinski, appearing suddenly with a glass of Coke in her hand, looking around, checking the place out.
‘I know another bar called the Green Room if you’d rather,’ I told her.
‘We don’t have time.’
‘Which reminds me, you’re late.’
‘I got a call from my boss.’ She took the seat opposite while I crunched an ice cube. ‘Stu Forrest was just an alias.’
‘Forrest.’ My brain was splashing around in a bath of bourbon. The name was familiar but I was having trouble recalling who he was.
‘He did the fuel planning on Randy’s flight. The guy who took off for Mexico just before we turned up at NAB . . .’
Oh, yeah.
‘His real name was Ed Dyson – that’s Lieutenant Ed Dyson. He was a Navy meteorologist with a masters in high-altitude wind modeling. He left the service a little over a year ago, discharged on medical grounds, and went straight to work with Morrow at NAB.’
‘So he’s a weatherman?’ I smirked, picturing a chubby guy on daytime TV moving cardboard clouds around a map.
‘Do you know anything about wind, Cooper?’
‘I get plenty eating onions.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘It’s no laughing matter, trust me.’
‘Cooper . . .’
I sighed. ‘Okay, you got me. Tell me what you think I should know.’ Being serious, all I knew about wind was that it often blew onshore near the coast – something to do with the land heating up faster than the water. But I had a feeling my beachside experience was about as relevant to Petinski as my relationship with onions.
‘It’s important to know that when a physics package detonates, it generates clouds of lethal radioactive dust that get spread high and wide. Weather prediction – especially the movement of high-altitude winds – is probably the single most important planning aspect that goes into a nuclear strike.’
I put my drink down on the table. ‘Why’s it taken Defense Intelligence this long to ascertain the guy’s identity?’
‘Too many threats, too many budget cuts, too few assets. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.’ Petinski had me there. ‘Dyson also used a false social security card and passport,’ she continued. ‘And he was operating on the edges of our surveillance. If anyone was going to catch him out it would’ve been Randy, but perhaps he wasn’t on the ground long enough to identify him.’
‘Or maybe Randy got too close to Dyson, asked too many questions. Dyson contacted von Weiss, who was suspicious anyway, and Randy’s next long-distance flight runs out of gas.’
That gave Petinski something to think about.
‘And DCIS thinks Dyson flew south to link up with this Benicio von Weiss,’ I said.
‘That’s the conclusion.’
Rio. I’d never been there, though a buddy of mine, after seeing the city’s famous Carnival, said the place was like a twelve-mile erogenous zone. Maybe there was a silver lining to this nuclear cloud yet.
Fifteen
When we arrived at our hotel on the beach at Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, I told the cab driver to keep driving. I liked the setting just fine, but the hotel was old and narrow, and according to a sign out front it had great dormitory-style accommodation.
‘What are we doing?’ Petinski asked, turning to look out the back window.
‘Are you a backpacker?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Me neither.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Don’t know yet.’ I leaned forward to have a word with the driver. ‘You speak English, buddy?’ I asked him. A grunt suggested he might. ‘What’s the most expensive hotel you got round here?’
‘Copacabana Palace,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You want to go there?’
I told him yes.
‘It’ll come out of your expenses, not mine,’ Petinski warned as the driver hit the brakes, swerved and accelerated down a side street. I figured that if a nuclear bomb was set off somewhere, our hotel bill would be the least of anyone’s concerns. And if we managed to prevent it, same outcome. For once I was going first-class. ‘If you’re worried about it, we can share a room,’ I told her.
‘In your dreams.’
The Copacabana Palace on Copacabana Beach was all scallops, arches and French windows painted a pinkish shade of white. A plastic bride and groom perched on the roof wouldn’t have been out of place. A Rolls-Royce was parked in the forecourt between a Lamborghini and a stretch Hummer. Petinski gazed up at the hotel out her window as the cab driver waited for a break in the traffic to turn into the forecourt.
‘I can already see the zeros on the minibar prices,’ I said. ‘We should check in as an engaged couple.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Might give us options down the track – cover, and so forth.’
She gave me a look that said if I had an ulterior motive, I should get it out of my head.
I answered with a look that said, ‘Who, me?’
The cab driver swung us into a gap that opened up in the oncoming traffic and planted us in the hotel’s forecourt with a squeal of brakes. I paid the fare and two guys in their mid-twenties wearing crisp gray suits and flat, round pillbox hats arrived and held our doors open.
‘You have baggage, sir?’ asked the guy holding my door.
I could’ve mentioned my ex-wife but I said, ‘In the trunk.’
Petinski and I got out. It was hot, different from the Vegas kind of heat. This was the wet, steamy variety, exhaled as if from nearby jungle. We followed our luggage to reception where we were met by chandeliers, vases painted into the recesses on the walls, smooth tiled floors and three South American glamour types working the counter.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said a tall dark-skinned woman with thick black hair, bright red lips and an exotic accent. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We’re checking in.’
Petinski gave her a brief smile then melted into the background.
‘Certainly. Name?’
‘Cooper. Vincent Cooper.’ I put my Visa card on the counter with a snap and her fingers went to work on a keyboard. Concern almost immediately began to trouble her unlined forehead. ‘Um . . . did I mention that we don’t have a reservation?’ I confessed, confirming her fear.
‘Oh, I’m not sure we have a room vacant, sir. We are fully booked.’
I noticed that on her finger was a gleaming engagement ring yet to be dulled by disappointment. The badge on her firm bosom told me her name was Gracia.
I dropped my voice. ‘Look, Gracia, if you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it. I was hoping to ask my girlfriend here to marry me.’ I gestured with an eye movement at Petinski, who was wandering around examining the wall art. ‘But then her purse got snatched at the airport and our romantic getaway is turning into a nightmare. I need a little help to get the job done. Just a couple of nights. Really, whatever you’ve got . . .’
The frown intensified, but movement at the corner of her lips told me that I might possibly have mined some empathy. Her fingers worked the keyboard harder and she exchanged a few quick words with the woman beside her. After this discussion she returned to me, looking a little pained. ‘I am sorry, we have only one room available, but the TV, it is not working . . .’
War Lord Page 19