by Ward Larsen
Thankfully, the man with the backpack wasn’t a pro. A trained operator would never have tried to remove the weapon from the carrier—from such short range, he could easily have executed a blind shot straight through the nylon. As it was, he fumbled, and shouted, “Sami!”
Slaton closed the five-stride gap in less than two seconds.
Like a medieval warrior in dive gear, he held the bang stick like a lance and planted it squarely on the man’s ribcage. The powerhead made contact and the twelve-gauge shell fired. The results were devastating. The man flew backward on the deck in a spray of blood and tissue.
Slaton never paused. He reached for the backpack and extracted his prize—a PP-2000 machine pistol. He took a two-handed grip, and as he spun to his right checked the fire-selector switch. It was already in auto.
His eyes swept the foredeck, ready to lay down fire—he had no idea if the last man was packing. Slaton didn’t see him for a moment, and he instinctively began to move. Then a flash of blue fabric caught his eye along the starboard rail. He sent a short burst that splintered wood and fiberglass. There was a grunt, and the man stood straight behind the side window at the helm. Slaton unleashed an extended burst through the glass, and the man flipped over the rail and into the sea. He ran to the spot, saw him facedown in the water. Slaton double-checked the other two, confirming there was no life in either.
It was all over that fast. Fifteen seconds had he timed it.
He saw a stairwell leading below deck. Were there more men below? His instincts told him no, but there was only one way to be sure. And he was headed there anyway—like it or not.
He descended carefully, pausing on each step. The slowness was agonizing, but necessary. The first thing he saw on the lower deck was a large compartment: galley, prayer rugs, food wrappers. Slaton heard a comforting sound from above: Sorensen approaching in the runabout.
He cleared the room carefully, efficiently. Moving forward he encountered the crew’s quarters—four beds with twisted sheets and pillows, four others untouched. Was there one more? He edged back to the companionway and moved aft, his weapon poised.
As he neared the last compartment, the first thing he saw around the corner was a workbench and tools. Then the array of bright work lights on the ceiling. Finally, as the center of the room came into view, he saw the rest. A long steel tube—if he wasn’t mistaken, an artillery tube. It had been modified on both ends. Slaton hadn’t had the time to envision what he was looking for, but the picture before him left no doubt. This was the weapon. And it was going to vaporize the island in—he checked his watch—twelve minutes.
Slaton moved closer, caution in every step. He searched for booby traps. Listened for any sound. He stared at the breech end of the weapon and saw a tangle of at least twenty wires. Batteries, clocks, small plastic cases. He recalled Sorensen relaying Park’s promise … The device itself won’t be hard to deactivate—a simple switch with a clock, and we’ll have ample time.
Like hell, Slaton thought.
Someone had modified the general’s plan.
He stared in disbelief. If he couldn’t disarm the weapon, it was all over. It would detonate, taking him and Sorensen and Midway Atoll with it. And worst of all—any hope his family might still have.
Slaton felt a terrible twist in his gut.
There has to be a way …
He turned and ran for the stairs.
SEVENTY-SIX
“Your phone,” he shouted to Sorensen. “I need it!”
She had the dinghy lashed to his climbing rope and was struggling to get a good grip. “I’ll be right up!”
“No time! Throw it to me!”
She hesitated, then reached into her pocket for the sat-phone she’d retrieved from the Citation—at that moment it was their only link to D.C. Sorensen lowered the phone, then pitched it up ten feet toward Slaton’s waiting hand.
Except it only traveled eight.
Slaton snatched at the phone but couldn’t reach, and he watched helplessly as it arced back down toward the lagoon. A wide-eyed Sorensen lunged and grabbed it the instant before it hit the water.
Slaton cocked his head. “A little more carefully … please.”
Sorensen took better aim, and on the second pass they connected.
Slaton rushed downstairs. He quickly took two pictures of the weapon and sent them to Langley. He then made voice contact. His call was answered by a voice he recognized—Thomas Coltrane, director of the CIA.
There was no time for catching up. “What do I do to disarm this thing?” Slaton demanded.
“Stand by. We’re analyzing.”
“Stand by? Do you realize—”
“We are aware of the time constraints,” Coltrane broke in. “Keep sending images, the rest of the weapon.” Slaton began snapping and sending pictures from every possible angle. As he did, he heard a gasp from behind.
Sorensen had made it up the rope.
“God Almighty,” she said, edging closer and looking at her watch. “We have nine minutes,” she said.
“And thirty seconds,” he added, still feverishly sending images. “And let’s hope their clock isn’t running fast.” After one last picture, he again put the sat-phone to his ear. “Well?”
“We’re working on it,” said Coltrane with the coolness of a man who had five thousand miles to spare.
“Work faster!”
“All right. Our techs say the wires are a non-starter. If we had time we might figure it out, but it’s almost certainly booby-trapped.”
“I’m hoping you have another option,” Slaton said.
“Do you see the circular panel on the right side?”
Slaton did. “A steel cover, the size of a dinner plate. Ten bolts.”
“According to our people, that’s our best chance.” Coltrane told them what to do.
Slaton turned and found Sorensen staring at him.
“Okay,” he said. “You find a bucket. I’ll look for a wrench.”
* * *
Sorensen found a ten-gallon plastic bucket on deck in the third compartment she checked. There was already a line attached, so she went to the port rail and dropped it into the lagoon. It took all her strength to haul what was probably eight gallons of water back up. By the time she got back below, Slaton had two bolts remaining. He was spinning the wrench like a man possessed.
When the final bolt hit the floor, he said, “Do I just pry the cover off?”
He’d put the phone to speaker while he worked, and a voice that wasn’t Coltrane’s said, “Yes … but try not to inhale excessively. If this section is what we think it is, it might contain highly radioactive material.”
Slaton and Sorensen exchanged a pained look. He grabbed a flat-head screwdriver from the nearby workbench, pried off the heavy cover, and let it fall to the floor. Nothing happened. No explosion. No ominous glow inside.
Slaton tried not to breathe. It didn’t work.
“Done,” he announced.
“That’s good,” the same voice said. “Now the water.”
Slaton took the bucket from Sorensen, stealing a glance at his watch. Six minutes. As carefully as he could, he poured the entire contents of the bucket through the aperture and into the barrel. At the very end there was backflow over the portal, implying the chamber had filled.
“Okay, now what?” Slaton asked, wondering if the steel plate had to be reinstalled.
Coltrane’s voice returned. “Now get the hell out of there!”
* * *
Sorensen had the dinghy running full throttle when its rubber hull skidded onto the white sand beach. With less than a minute to go, she clambered out and turned toward the operations building. Slaton grabbed her by the wrist and wrenched her in the other direction. They took cover behind the great boulders that lined the breakwater, their backs hard against warm coral slabs, their feet in the sand.
The sun beat down, reflecting off the beach with overwhelming brilliance, dancing over aquamarine waters. Th
ey exchanged a glance.
“Do you think this will work?” she asked.
He looked across the island. In the distance he saw an unconcerned teenager walking with a fishing pole on his shoulder. “I have no idea.”
“I’d like to say thanks—either way.”
“Yeah. Either way. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t get on that airplane.”
“If this does work out, I want you to know … I haven’t forgotten my end of the bargain.”
“Good,” he said. “Because neither have I.”
Slaton was about to say something else when the harbor was rocked by a massive explosion.
* * *
The scientific term for what occurred was predetonation, more commonly referred to as “a fizzle.” The term is a deceptively bland one for the most inelegant of technical failures: what occurs when a nuclear weapon fails to achieve its intended chain reaction.
It would eventually be determined that the gun-type device on Albatross’ lower deck attained less than one-tenth of one percent of its potential destructive power. The force of the primary conventional charge, instead of driving two uranium masses together to achieve criticality, was instead redirected by the seawater inside the tube. The end result was that the weapon, so carefully crafted by legions of North Korean engineers, and assembled by four ISIS jihadists, literally blew itself apart at the breech end.
Yet if the two uranium masses never collided, the explosion was not without consequences. Great chunks of forged metal burst outward in a hailstorm of shrapnel, most critically downward. The boat’s steel hull was penetrated at a half-dozen stations below the waterline. Albatross shuddered violently with the initial blast, and soon after—as viewed by two cautious heads rising above the distant breakwater—geysers of overpressurized steam vented from the main stairwell like smoke from a dragon’s lair. Soon after this, there was a gentle repositioning, the greater hull taking on a distinct list to starboard. The stricken boat came to rest on the sandy bottom, canted severely, a maelstrom of purging air and whitewater swirling about her wheelhouse.
In the end, it could be viewed that her death was not unlike those of hundreds of other ships since the dawn of the nuclear era. In places like Bikini and Eniwetok. Albatross, like those before her, assumed her final resting place torn, irradiated, and settled crookedly on the white-sand bottom of a distant Pacific atoll.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
It took two hours for the response to begin materializing. The first airplane to land at Henderson Field was a Kentucky Air National Guard C-130, which by chance had been passing fifty miles south of Midway when the weapon on Albatross detonated. The local residents who had not reached the Citation in time—fourteen, as it turned out—were rounded up for immediate evacuation to Honolulu.
The second arrival was a U.S. Navy C-2A Greyhound—a carrier-onboard-delivery aircraft, or COD—that had launched from Stennis. The COD taxied to the tiny terminal where a team of sixteen officers and enlisted personnel deplaned—these, in effect, were the first responders, carrying instruments for measuring levels of radioactive contamination. This was only the beginning. Across the Pacific, ships and airplanes and medical units found themselves being mobilized on a moment’s notice. Their mission: to quantify, and if possible contain, the nuclear disaster on Midway Atoll.
Slaton and Sorensen were headed the other way.
Sorensen spent nearly half an hour on the phone. It didn’t escape Slaton’s notice that much of her conversation was out of earshot for him. He decided to let it go, and after what seemed like lengthy negotiations, she met him in the shade of a coconut palm near the operations building.
“We’ve got our ride out.”
“The C-130?”
“No. We’ve been given permission to board the COD for the return flight to Stennis.”
“And then?”
“Let’s talk about that when we get there.”
Slaton almost protested. Then he opted for patience—and to once again trust Anna Sorensen.
* * *
Two hours after averting disaster in a bucolic Pacific lagoon, Slaton found himself strapped into a utilitarian seat and slamming onto the flight deck of the John C. Stennis, flagship of the United States Navy’s Carrier Strike Group Three.
The COD was immediately marshaled to a clear area, and Slaton found himself being issued ear protection. He put on the Mickey Mouse earmuffs, and was glad to have them moments later when he stepped into what had to be one of the loudest places on earth. An F-18 launching off the nearby catapult made his skull vibrate, and the visual image was a blur as men and women in color-coded vests scurried around deck. Slaton saw an officer in tan service dress beckoning him and Sorensen toward a door on the island beneath the bridge.
They all ducked inside, and only then did the man try to talk.
“Welcome aboard!” he said. He was smiling, and looked about eighteen years old—although as an officer he was probably ten beyond that. “I’m Lieutenant Ross.”
Slaton and Sorensen pulled off their earmuffs and introduced themselves.
“The strike group commander, Rear Admiral Wilson, wants to see you.”
They followed Ross up three flights of stairs, then through a series of hallways, ending in an empty conference room. They took seats on one side of an oval table. Ross waited with them, although Slaton noticed he’d planted himself in the farthest corner of the room. He wondered if Ross thought they might be contaminated. As it turned out, he was right, although not in the way he was thinking.
An admiral wearing service khaki appeared in the doorway. He was tall and lean, a living testament to regulation, and in his left hand was a manila file folder. The look on his face was nothing short of thunder.
Slaton had never technically been in the military, but he’d worked with a great number of soldiers, both operationally and during training courses, including sniper school—that being the case, he knew that when a flag officer entered the room, it couldn’t hurt to stand. He did, and Sorensen followed his lead. This seemed to soften the admiral’s visage, but only slightly. Wilson shook their hands stiffly, then took a seat across the table. Lieutenant Ross blended into the faux woodwork.
Wilson didn’t speak right away, his eyes alternating between Slaton and Sorensen. They finally settled on her.
“Miss Sorensen … assistant deputy director, CIA.” His tone was nothing short of an accusation.
“That’s right.”
“You certainly know how to pull strings, ma’am.”
“Only with good reason.”
A frown.
“Is that for me?” she asked, nodding to the folder he’d placed on the table.
The admiral pushed it across the hardwood surface.
Sorensen opened it and began reading. Because she held it at an angle, Slaton couldn’t see what was inside. Wilson’s eyes remained fixed on Sorensen.
Only when she finally closed the folder did the admiral divert his eyes to Slaton. “I don’t know who you are, mister, but if you think—”
“Enough!” Sorensen said, getting up out of her chair. “You two, out,” she said, looking alternately at Slaton and Lieutenant Ross.
Ross was out the door in a flash. Slaton stood, hesitated. He leveled a flat gaze at the admiral before exiting to the adjacent room. The door closed behind him. It was a heavy item, and Slaton couldn’t hear what went on inside. He caught more intonations than words, and most of it seemed to be coming from Sorensen. After five minutes, the door opened.
Rear Admiral Wilson emerged. He walked up to Slaton with something new in his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said, extending his hand.
Slaton shook Wilson’s hand a second time, and said, “It’s okay … but for what?”
“Sometimes orders come down the pike and we’re not told the reasons behind them. The one we received tonight, regarding you, was to say the least out of the ordinary. Miss Sorensen has explained what you did for our nation today. She also told me
a little about your own troubles. I will do whatever I can to help.”
“I appreciate that, Admiral.” He looked theatrically around the room. “Does that mean I now have command of a carrier air wing?”
Wilson half smiled. “Don’t press your luck, mister. Commander Rhea will be waiting for you in the ready room.” The admiral strode off and headed up a flight of stairs.
Slaton went back to the conference room. “Are you going to tell me what the hell that was all about?”
Sorensen pointed to a chair. “Have a seat, David.”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
“We have new photos of the compound,” Sorensen said.
She removed four overheads from the folder and slid them in front of him. Slaton pored over every detail and decided the place looked little different from the last images he’d seen. He noticed that guards were still posted, albeit in slightly different positions. “How sure can we be that Christine and Davy are there?”
“As sure as we can be without having eyes inside. I haven’t seen it, but I’m told there’s imagery that appears to have captured them walking across the driveway a few hours ago. We’ve been watching the place nonstop since then—no vehicles either in or out.”
“Okay. So how do we get them out?”
“A mission is being put together at Camp Humphreys—it’s an Army post in South Korea. SEAL Team Five was already forward deployed, and they’re planning to go in using three low-observable helicopters, heavily modified UH-60s.”
“Stealth Black Hawks—like the ones used in the bin Laden raid?”
“Even better—I’m told they’ve been upgraded. That’s good because the North Koreans have a decent air defense network.”
Slaton stared at her for a beat. “When does this mission launch?”
“The timing is being determined.”