by Joe Buff
"So?" Jeffrey whispered when it was safe.
"The staff's ordered to attend a security briefing. Right now, in the main auditorium."
"Where's that?"
"It's in this lab half. Follow me."
When someone broke out bottles of French champagne, Ilse yawned, then excused herself. She left Gaubatz in the test section, and tried to find a stairway to the next level down.
She knew she had to plant the bomb under the test section, nearer the structure's solid foundation. Clayton had warned her to avoid a vibration-isolated area. He wanted both bombs going off together, no matter what. If the one the SEALs would plant in the other hardened lab-half was triggered by its antitamper protection, the shock had to reach the bomb on Ilse's side as well, and still be strong enough to trip its antitamper. For now, Ilse would just conceal the bomb. She wasn't allowed to arm it till she had met again with Jeffrey; he would give the rules-of-engagement go-ahead after she gave her report. Ilse felt a powerful craving for the team to somehow make it out of the lab, to get back to friendly lines, to carry a warning. From what she'd seen, this Mach 8 missile was a much greater threat than anyone realized.
There was an announcement over the loudspeakers, something about a security briefing. Attendance was mandatory for junior staff. Ilse ignored it. Good, fewer people around. She reached the lower level and started scouting for a good hiding place for the nuclear device. She ran into a pair of naval infantry guards. They scolded her for trying to skip the briefing.
Ilse said she was new. They directed her to the auditorium. It was in the other half. She said she was lost, which was true. One guard said he'd show her to the interlock. Now she had no way to hide her bomb.
Still carrying the briefcase bomb, Ilse lingered toward the back of the crowd waiting to pass through the blast-door interlock. Employees were sent through in batches. Ilse noticed the guards were checking people's briefcases and bags. She heard one guard say something about a murder—a body had been found sprawled in a utility space, stabbed repeatedly. The SEALs must have taken him out of the body bag, to conceal their presence and widen the list of suspects, knowing the corpse was certain to be found eventually.
When it was Ilse's turn, she ran her card through the reader and looked into the retinal scanner.
A female guard reached for Ilse's ID, and studied it skeptically.
"How did you get in here?"
"I just arrived," Ilse said. "I'm new," She tried to smile.
"I said, how did you get in here? There's no trace in the computer of you ever coming from the other section."
Ilse blanched. The employee entrance to the facility, she realized, was in the other half, and she'd never been checked in.
She thought of running. She glanced through the nearer set of blast doors. The far set, inevitably, was closed—the interlocking made sure they'd never be ajar together.
"I, er, I, I can't understand the problem. It's certainly not my fault." Ilse knew instantly that was the wrong thing to say, under the present circumstances. It was like pissing off a traffic cop at a roadblock—one who'd just lost a friend killed in the line of duty.
A male guard came over and fingered his pistol in its holster. Two other men quickly checked the rest of the crowd, then let them through. The blast door on this side swung closed, and stayed that way. Ilse was left alone with the guards.
"Your accent," the female said.
"I'm South African."
"Open your briefcase."
Ilse lifted it to the table, needing both hands. She unlocked the top, revealing the files and textbooks. She knew
the guards might just be giving her a hard time out of nervousness or boredom. But .. . The female guard hefted the case. "It's very heavy. What else do you have in this?"
"Urn, my laptop."
"Put it through the scanner," the woman said to the man.
"No," Ilse said, thinking fast. "You can't. It's, um, it's a special machine. They told me the scanner fields would ruin it."
"Show it to me," the female said.
Ilse's heart beat so hard she was sure they could see her chest pulsating, or maybe the arteries in her neck. She tilted the case, at an angle away from the guards. She took out the dummy files and made as confused a pile of papers as she could. She showed the keyboard and screen underneath to the guards.
The woman guard's eyes narrowed. "Turn it on."
SIMULTANEOUSLY.
The auditorium held three hundred people. As far as Jeffrey could tell, every seat was taken. He and Montgomery stood at the back, trying to blend with the other standees. A coarse fat man strutted onto the stage. He wore an expensive dark gray doublebreasted suit. He stood at a lectern with a microphone. The man began to speak. Jeffrey didn't understand a word.
Ilse always imagined she'd sweat at a time like this, or feel cold and have the shakes. Instead, she felt nothing, like a robot.
I haven't heard from Jeffrey, but with that test chamber demonstration I've seen enough. I can't let them take me, or let them take the bomb.
"It needs a special password. For security." She began to enter the arming code. The device accepted it. Instead
of starting the delay timer, she reached for the plastic shield that protected the instantfiring button. She lifted the shield; this also made the fissionable core preassemble. Something beeped. "Increased radiation reading," the male guard said. He looked at Ilse and drew his gun.
Can I push the detonator button thrice before he shoots me dead? Ilse fixed her eyes on the guard. She was surprised how calm she felt. She pushed the button once. Then again. Once more and . . .
She had an idea.
"The magnetic storm." She kept her finger on the firing button.
"What?" the female guard said.
"It must be the magnetic storm. It's powerful now." "You mean to tell me it broke your fancy laptop?" "No, er, I mean, the security computer. Maybe that's why it doesn't show me coming in, and the radiation reading." The male and female looked at each other.
Ilse took a breath. "Does your detector distinguish between alpha and gamma radiation?
Does it show beta and neutrons separate or together? What's the integration interval?
The alarm threshold? When was the last time you had it calibrated?" The male guard shrugged.
"You're a technician?" the woman said. "Then who's your boss?"
"I was just at the wind tunnel test," Ilse stated. "With Commander Gaubatz. You can call him if you like." Ilse tried to act blasé.
The guards, all junior enlisted, hesitated. The point was, Ilse realized, they weren't traffic cops. They were naval infantry, and she knew a commander.
"You go ahead and call him," Ilse said. "I have work to do."
"Better hurry," the male guard said. "You'll miss the meeting." Ilse left the weapon armed, just in case.
Ilse squeezed through a side door into the auditorium. It was crowded—she had to stand against the wall. She glanced across the crowd, and spotted Jeffrey and Montgomery. She looked away at once, in case they saw her and reacted and gave themselves away. She noticed someone else looking at her.
Oh, God, it's that Boer submariner. He knows he knows me.
Ilse waved—what else could she do? He nodded, but seemed puzzled, like he was trying to remember how they'd met. Now she started to sweat—the room seemed unbearably hot, and not from the body heat of the audience.
A fat man stood at the lectern. There was a vicious set to his mouth, and he had hard, pitiless eyes.
"I think that we can rest easier now, with closure on this most unfortunate incident. Erika Rainer has paid the price for her treason, unrepentant till the end, hanged by the neck until dead, convicted by a tribunal which I chaired. I can assure you, the circumstantial evidence of her guilt was overwhelming. . . . The entire execution was recorded." He gave the URL on the lab's infranet, so people could download and watch. Ilse saw many in the crowd write the website name down.
"I need n
ot remind you, this entire matter is top secret and is not to leave this installation." He paused.
"And now I want to reassure you. Continue your work, with pride and confidence. Leave worries about internal security to me, and to my staff. They've proven their effectiveness. The last thing we need now is a self-destructive mole hunt." He asked for questions from the audience, but there were none. Then someone brought him a note from backstage.
The fat man—the head of Internal Security, Ilse realized—turned to the audience and cleared his throat.
"Some of you may have heard that a guard was found brutally murdered this evening." The audience stirred, alarmed.
The man raised his hands. "No, no. It's all right. A terrible tragedy for his wife and two young children, but the culprits have been found." The audience sat raptly. Ilse dreaded what she'd hear.
"You're aware of the stepped-up security because of the latest partisan attack, near the bay."
People nodded.
"It seems some of the Gastarbeiter became aware of the attack also. Two of them, in the most senseless copycat crime, decided to get in the act. They knifed a guard, repeatedly in the neck, using sharpened pipe-hanger brackets as makeshift daggers. Death was instantaneous. When we rounded up the Gastarbeiter, these two confessed at What the hell is going on?
"They have already been punished," the fat man said. "Hanged while the others were made to watch. A search is being conducted for additional concealed weapons. . . . Now you see why we use them as forced labor. . . .
"I apologize for having to share with you these gory details. You deserve to know what's going on. Again, let me emphasize, things have been taken care of. Leave worries of security to Internal Security, and to the local Naval Infantry detachment." The man paused again, drew a breath, and smiled. A screen came down in front of the curtain.
"On a much more positive note, this imagery has just come in from our front lines. You'
re very privileged to see it before the general public. As you watch, bear in mind that these missiles, of foreign—Russian—manufacture, only do Mach two point five." The lights began to dim, and martial music blared. Jeffrey realized it would be a wartime newsreel. Some things never change.
He glanced around. Diagonally across the auditorium, he made eye contact with Ilse, surprised to see her standing by one wall. He saw her briefcase. He realized she still had the other bomb—in the wrong half of the installation.
Now the lights were off. A picture came on the screen, a huge formation of merchant ships and escorts. It cut to one cargo vessel, flying an American flag. It cut to a frigate. It cut to a mushroom cloud blooming over the convoy.
Images from an unmanned aerial vehicle. No, more than one, judging by the angles and timing.
Fireballs burst from underwater. A makeshift troopship vaporized. Warships broke in half. More mushroom clouds rose skyward.
More undersea nuclear blasts. A liquid natural gas ship detonated. The picture panned the horizon. Three dozen mushroom clouds? The convoy and escorts were decimated.
The picture cut to a container ship, no, a troopship, sinking in a spreading inferno of flaming fuel. Black heads in the water, struggling amid the flames, without lips or fingers. A soldier, burned beyond recognition, being lifted into a helo. A woman soldier .
. .
The picture cut to a nuclear submarine, pulling into a dock at an underground hardened base. A brass band played on the pier. On the sound track, the martial music continued. Jeffrey studied every detail, desperate for clues on the sub's location. The camera zoomed to a man in dress blues on her bridge. A voice-over kept saying Deutschland. Deutschland. Germany. Germany.
The camera zoomed in more. No. Not "Germany." Deutschland, the nuclear submarine. Jeffrey's heart raced. Him.
The naval officer waved, self-satisfied and smug. He puffed a cigarette. Jeffrey knew that face, that arrogant
look. He seemed a little older, and even more sure of himself—as if that were possible. It was three years now, but Jeffrey still felt the hate. The man who had tried to ruin Jeffrey's career at the Pentagon, through deceitful office politics, and trumped-up charges of sexual misconduct. The man who thought himself, even then, the best natural submariner in the world.
A man with an evil secret, even then. One of the main long-term conspirators behind the Double Putsch. Now Freggatenkapitan, full commander, Kurt Eberhard. Ilse had to wipe her eyes. She blinked as the lights came on. Good, let people think it's eyestrain, not grief and horror.
The fat man stepped to the lectern again.
"Naval Intelligence estimates the Allied losses at between fifteen and twenty thousand killed, and thousands seriously wounded or burned, along with the sinking of nine escort warships and over three hundred thousand tons of merchant shipping." The audience grew even more excited. Several people cheered.
"As I mentioned, this was accomplished with Mach two point five missiles, against which Allied defenses are paltry enough. That, and of course Deutschland's state-of-theart nuclear torpedoes. In your mind, ladies and gentlemen, picture what we shall accomplish once our Mach eight weapon system becomes operational in the field." He paused.
"I am very pleased to inform you that the latest wind tunnel test, just this evening, was a complete success." More people cheered.
"Your senior director, now at a meeting in Berlin, has been informed. The High Command, I am proud to announce, has made the decision to go to full-scale mass production at once. . . . Work will begin immediately to
ship the jigs and dies to our impenetrable factories dug into the Alps.
"With this big step, through all your efforts, we usher in a new age of warfare! Victory draws near! Long live the Fatherland! Long live our beloved Kaiser, Wilhelm the Fourth!
"
A new picture came on the screen, the post-Putsch national flag: a two-headed black Germanic eagle, clutching the Hohenzollern crown, on a background of blood red. The audience rose to attention as one, and sang the new national anthem. Ilse forced herself to mouth the words.
As the crowd dispersed, Montgomery and Jeffrey approached Ilse.
"Follow me," she said, in German. She led them toward a ladies' room. Jeffrey carried the welding gear. Montgomery carried Ilse's briefcase, whose weight he seemed to hardly feel.
"Wait here," Ilse said. "I need to use the bathroom." Ilse made sure no one else was in the restroom. Then she went into a stall, and bent over the toilet. To mental images of the burned woman soldier dangling on a stretcher in midair, her flesh all black and blistered, cracked and oozing blood, Ilse vomited. She thought of ARBOR—not a code word but a person, a pregnant woman with a name—
also dangling in midair, and the pair of Turks.
Eventually there was nothing left to cough up. Ilse felt a little better. Ilse opened the ladies' room door and waved Jeffrey and Montgomery in. Montgomery propped the door open with a spare welding rod, while Jeffrey searched nonchalantly for a security camera. Satisfied there wasn't one, Jeffrey plugged the welding transformer into a utility socket, where
it could be seen through the restroom door. He had to make this look good—and also test the rig.
Jeffrey powered up the rig. He clipped the heavy ground cable to the stainless steel side of a toilet stall. He pulled a pair of dark goggles out of the rig's side compartment. He put them on and turned his face away. He applied the welding tip for a split second. There was a blinding flash, a sizzling noise, and an acrid smell. Droplets of hot metal spattered and burned his forearms through his coveralls. He held his breath and prayed, but the smoke alarm didn't go off. The smell lingered enough to give the scene authenticity: maintenance guys at work.
Jeffrey knelt by the side of the stall, ready to do it again if someone tried to enter the restroom. He waved for Ilse to stand in a corner, out of sight from the door. Now they had a place where the three of them could speak safely in English, to plot strategy. For Jeffrey, Montgomery and Ilse summarized the head of securi
ty's speech.
"Someone in there knew me," Ilse added. "I don't think he remembered from where, not right away." "Who?" Jeffrey said.
"A South African naval officer."
"Great. One more time bomb ticking on our heads." "How'd you make out with Lieutenant Clayton and Salih?" Ilse said.
"We got separated. We don't know where they are." "You think they were arrested?"
"If they were, we have a major problem. You heard what Shajo said: One bomb isn't enough to make an end to this whole place. . . . If they're okay, they'll head for the emergency rally point."
"How do we get back there? Going through the interlock again tempts fate too much."
"Salih said there was an air duct," Jeffrey said, "but we couldn't find it. It's not on the floor plan."
"Are you satisfied with the ROEs?" Ilse said.
"What did you find so far?"
Ilse told him and Montgomery about the missile test. They listened raptly. She also mentioned what Gaubatz said, that key people worked on this side of the interlock, in a separate computer-aided-design lab.
"Okay," Jeffrey said. "The ROEs are met. We're all expendable."
"But—"
"We just heard of three people martyred here, and saw tons of thousands slaughtered in combat. We can't let them down, nor everyone else who's counting on us." Ilse hesitated only a moment. "I agree."
Jeffrey was surprised how determined she sounded. We were just starting to really know each other, our moods and dislikes and desires, and now we're going to die.
"Chief, you head upstairs. Find a guard. Ask them outright where's the air duct. Also, ask if they've seen a guy in a welding mask."
"That's risky, Skipper," Montgomery said.
"We'll have to chance it. Then come back here." Montgomery left.
"Ilse," Jeffrey said, "I'll stay put, and keep pretending to weld. I want you to go back out there with your device. Find the computer center. Arm the bomb, then hide it somewhere good."
"It's already armed."
Jeffrey's eyebrows raised.
"I had some trouble with the checkpoint guards." "Did you start the timer?"
"No. I almost had to use the instant-firing switch."