The aft end of the sub approached. Sam heaved the chain over the tail end of the hull, metal grinding against metal. The weight dragged the aft downward, aiming the forward end up. The flow of water over the sub’s hull caused the chain to slide backward toward the propeller.
Sam kept the remaining end of the chain gripped in one hand. Now, he fed it into the blades of the propeller. At first nothing happened, and Sam began to swear. Did I miss it completely?
He was holding his breath, letting himself sink to the depth of the min-sub when he felt a tug on the chain. Obligingly, the blades caught the links and started to draw them back around the shaft.
The chain pulled smoothly for only a second.
Sam waited.
The chain caught against one of the blades and fouled around it, winding around the shaft. The propeller ground to a halt. Still straining to turn, the shaft started to leak dark oil into the water…
Sam kicked his legs hard, swimming away from the sub. A moment later he watched the craft start to sink. Without the forward momentum needed, it would soon be at the bottom of the deepest part of the Potomac, about eighty feet under at this point. After taking a few quick, deep breaths, he duck-dived, keeping his eyes on the submarine, until it finally reached the silty bed of the Potomac.
The hatch remained shut.
He waited as long as his lungs would allow him, and then swam back up to the surface. He didn’t idle in the middle of the river. Instead, he rapidly stroked toward the shore.
Hypothetically, deep, fresh water should be able to insulate the populated area around them from radiation if the bomb went off. Unfortunately, the weapon’s shockwave was still going to be lethal.
Chapter Ten
Sam sat on the edge of the east river bank panting raggedly.
A black helicopter hovered directly above where the sub had sunk in the Potomac. Its side doors swung open. Seven Navy SEAL divers stepped off the skids, dropping into the river, disappearing into the water below.
Sam watched as all but one of the elite team of Navy divers sank into the now murky water, while one of the men surface swam over to meet him.
The Navy diver came out of the water grinning. “My name’s Lieutenant Worly. I’m here to make sure you’re all right! Your crazy escapade to stop the submarine from continuing up the Potomac? It was genius! We spotted the sub inactive on the bottom of the river.”
Sam’s cheeks dimpled with amusement. “Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”
Worly’s smile disappeared. “We’ll soon find out.”
“Yeah, we will.” Sam offered his right hand. “I’m Sam Reilly by the way.”
Worly shook his hand with a firm shake, meeting his eyes. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sam Reilly. No injuries?”
“None. Thanks, I’m fine.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“All good, I hope.”
The diver shook his head and released Sam’s hand. “Not all good.”
Sam shrugged, indifferently. He’d been called names before. “What do you think? Will you be able to defuse it?”
“A nuclear bomb from the 1940s?” The diver cocked an eyebrow. “Hopefully. We won’t know for sure until we open up that mini-sub and find out what type of arming plugs they were using.”
“You don’t know?” Sam asked, still catching his breath from his dive.
“No one knows. How could we? Until a few hours ago, no one had even heard of Germany successfully producing a nuclear weapon during WWII.” The diver sighed. “We’re hoping the arming plugs were based on similar technology to what the Manhattan Project developed during that period – but that’s only a hope. In reality, there’s every chance that the Germans came up with a different solution to simultaneous detonation.”
Sam asked, “I was worried there was a risk of it being accidentally triggered by the sudden change in the sub’s depth when I sank it. Apparently not.”
The SEAL shook his head. “Where traditional bombs can be activated by any sudden change in movement, nuclear weapons take an extraordinary amount of effort to activate.”
“A nearby explosion won’t set off the reaction?” Sam asked.
“Not a chance. Do you know how a nuclear explosion works?”
Sam shook his head. “Not a clue. I must have been away from class the day they were teaching that in school.”
The diver gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Basically. They work by simultaneously compressing the fissionable material – either enriched uranium 238 or plutonium 239 – to its critical mass.”
“The weapon works on an implosion?”
“Exactly. Later they developed what is called a neutron trigger – also known as a modulated neutron initiator – capable of producing a burst of neutrons on activation that would kick start the chain reaction of nuclear fission.”
“But not in 1945?”
“No.” The diver said, “I can’t say for certain what the Germans had developed, but at Oak Ridge, the Manhattan Project built an exploding-bridgewire – EBW – a precision-timed detonator. It’s used to initiate the explosion using an electric current, similar to a blasting cap, that precisely compresses the bomb's plutonium pit and initiates the reaction.”
“How did they do that?”
“EBW detonators were typically constructed of either gold, platinum, or an alloy of the two, and are activated with the application of a strong electrical current – about 1000 amperes per microsecond –typically from a Marx generator. This powerful current heats the metal so quickly and in such a small area that the liquid vaporizes. A few nanoseconds after, the wire explodes, creating a shock wave and releasing the contained thermal energy, igniting the rest of the reaction.”
“Interesting.” Sam glanced at his watch. Nearly five minutes had passed since the rest of the SEAL team had disappeared beneath the surface of the Potomac. “As I’m fit and healthy, why are you still here?”
“I’m making sure you don’t dive in for curiosity’s sake.” Then Worly gave a rueful smile. “Also, my wife just gave birth to a baby girl. That might have been the reason I got picked to keep you out of trouble.”
“Congratulations,” Sam said, bestowing a genuine smile. “Your first?”
“Yes, and it makes me doubly worry.”
Sam frowned. He didn’t know a lot about nuclear weapons, but he knew enough to realize they were well within the blast radius. “I don’t expect that the bank of the Potomac is far enough away to keep either of us out of trouble…”
The diver shrugged philosophically. “Then my men will need to make sure the bomb doesn’t get the chance to detonate.”
They waited. With every minute that passed, Sam’s jaw clinched harder.
Finally, a head broke the surface of the river, swimming over to the two of them. “Worly,” the other man called. “We need your help down here, and we could use yours, too, Mr. Reilly. The mini-sub needs to be moved so we can get into it, we don’t have enough manpower to do it on our own. We could either wait for a truck with a winch to get out here –”
“Or I could free-dive down with you and we can see if with more manpower we can push it ourselves,” Sam said. “All right, let’s do this.”
Worly said, “You can buddy breathe from my regulator.”
“Thanks.”
Sam buddy-dived to the bottom with Worly.
The Potomac had silted up from the crash at the bottom as the current was a steady push from upstream. Sam free-dove downward. The midget sub was a dark shadow on the riverbed, he could almost have mistaken it for a rock.
The entrance to the sub was a hatch in the front of the finlike conn tower, and it was butted up against a solid piece of rock. Worly offered Sam his regulator, and he took a few breaths as he considered the situation. The divers were trying to roll the submarine off the rock. Rotating it would likely work better.
Sam swam to the aft end of the midget sub and started pulling the chain away from the propeller. He had no int
ention of unjamming it, only shifting the weight a little. He dropped the chain down into the silt at the bottom of the riverbed, then waved the other men over.
After a short, waved conference, the four men braced themselves and pulled on the chain. The conn tower caught against the rock, and as the aft end of the midget sub swung one way, the forward end swung the other. A few seconds later, the hatch was clear of the rock, with just enough room for a diver to maneuver.
Sam and Worly watched as the other divers prepared to enter.
The hatch was soon opened, and a pair of the divers slipped inside. For a couple of minutes, Sam had almost forgotten that their lives were at stake.
Now he remembered.
Soon one of the divers had emerged. He swam over to the two of them and waved them toward the hatch. Sam took another breath from the regulator, then swam inside.
The sub was cramped, but empty. No pilot.
No nuclear bomb.
The first diver waved toward Sam, then pointed to one of the inner walls. On it, written in diver’s chalk, were the words:
Mr. Sam Reilly,
So good of you to join us. Now that you’re here, the game can begin…
The message was unsigned.
Chapter Eleven
Sam surfaced alongside the other divers. This time, he emerged on the west side of the river. The Secretary of Defense was there, waiting for him, her helicopter waiting nearby.
“Well?” she asked.
“No bomb,” Sam said. “The sub’s empty.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled a deep breath. Opening them again, she said, “Nothing there? Not even a pilot?”
Sam nodded. “Nothing except a note.”
“A note?”
“Yeah, it was addressed to me specifically. Its author wrote: so good of you to join us. Now that you’re here, the game can begin…”
Her jaw tightened with displeasure. “Someone’s playing a game with you?’
“It would appear so, ma’am.” Sam grimaced. “But even though the note was addressed to me, the game is being played with everybody – like it or not.”
“Christ. Who knows how many powerful people you and your family have pissed off over the years?” She turned to an aide, and, taking command of the situation said, “I need a handwriting analyst, an underwater forensics team, and a terrorism profiler. This doesn’t sound like the usual sort. Nothing about religion or politics. We’re going to have to bring that sub up, but I don’t have time for it now. What the hell kind of terrorist wants to play a game with you, Reilly? This is going to be an absolute shit storm.”
“I have to agree, ma’am.” It was a sunny day, but someone thoughtfully dropped a blanket over his shoulders anyway. “I don’t have a clue who’s trying to get my attention, but I’m going to find out.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “A little detective work. I think I’ll start with the kid who inherited the map to the bomb.”
The secretary shook her head. “I’ve already had him checked over. He’s a nobody, Sam. You know what he’s been doing since he got his inheritance? Spending it in Manhattan. Let me correct myself in case I gave you the wrong impression. He’s bought an apartment building and appears to be setting it up as some kind of computer-game haven. Sound proof walls, energy drinks, and computer games. There’s no way he could have retrieved the bomb. We have him under surveillance.”
Sam asked, “You’ve checked with air traffic control for any flights during the last week between Maryland and the Great Falls of the Potomac?”
“Of course. We have no records of any helicopters or other craft flying near the crash area in the last three months. Nothing.”
Sam watched the water. The other divers had come up. It was going to be impossible to move the midget sub out of the river until after the lockdown on D.C. ended. There was no way to get a vehicle into the area to pull the sub out, or to haul it away. As always during an emergency, everyone was trying to make an exception of themselves, and every road was packed bumper-to-bumper with cars. It was all the local police – already stretched beyond their limits – could do to keep the onlookers away from the riverbank.
Nothing to see here. Just a sub that might have been carrying a nuclear bomb…
“What are you thinking?” the secretary asked.
“Something is off about all this.”
“Agreed. To what are you specifically referring? Anything? Or just a general sense?”
“Something specific is bothering me.” As he spoke, the off feeling settled in his mind. “That bomb had to weigh, what? Several thousand pounds?”
The secretary shook her head. “My people tell me it would have weighed more in the vicinity of eleven thousand. Why?”
“It seems pretty much impossible to move a bomb weighing more than five and a half tons out of a thickly wooded area on foot. Or was there a road cut into the trees?”
“No, nothing like that. I’ve seen drone footage.”
He grinned. “So how did they do it?”
“We’ve no idea.”
“Maybe the question isn’t how, but when. The bomb isn’t here in the river now. Which means that it could have been moved earlier. Since we know the kid didn’t do it, it doesn’t even depend on him receiving his grandfather’s bequest including the map. Anybody could have found it and moved it.”
“Good point. I’ll have the records search widened.”
Sam looked back and forth between D.C. and the Virginia sides of the river. Traffic backed up as far as the eye could see. “I need a ride to Manhattan. I could call Tom to get me, but I don’t think the Air Force would be too happy. This entire area must be a no-fly-zone.”
“I can get you to the Ronald Reagan Airport. You can take a commercial jet to JFK.”
“It’s a deal. After that I’ll pay the kid a visit and see what I can learn about his grandfather – and whoever else he might have spilled his secrets to.”
“You still think he was involved?” the Secretary of Defense asked.
He shrugged. “He’s the only lead we’ve got.”
Sam boarded the VH-60N Black Hawk with the Secretary of Defense, who needed to return to the Pentagon to update the President and the Commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – who were now bunkered beneath the White House.
Sam took his seat next to her, put his headset and seatbelts on, as the Black Hawk took off. It nosed down and began its south-eastern direction, crossing the Potomac, heading in a direct route to the Pentagon.
Behind them a second VIP helicopter was ferrying the first set of Congressmen and Congresswomen out of the Capitol.
Sam leaned back into his chair and exhaled a deep breath of air. Everything had happened so quickly in the past thirty minutes, it was hard to take it all in. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
They were nearly across the Potomac.
The flash rose from the eastern side of the river – outside of the Capital – racing toward them.
He swore and an instant later, the pilot banked sharply to the left.
The FIM-92 Stinger’s surface-to-air missile raced past them, leaving a trail of fire, locking onto the tail of the second helicopter.
Sam braced. His head snapped round, his eyes following the missile’s deadly trajectory as it struck the tail of the second helicopter.
The tail erupted into a ball of flame and for a second the helicopter hovered, while the pilot tried to maintain control. Unbalanced, and unable to offset the extreme torque by the main rotor, the helicopter made progressively larger and larger circles before entering an uncontrollable spin.
The pilot throttled down and set the craft into autorotation.
Sam watched as the helicopter raced toward the surface of the Potomac, before leveling out gradually an instant before it struck the surface of the river. The main rotor blade kept spinning, slicing the waves, before the helicopter sank, disappearing beneath the murky waters.
Chapte
r Twelve
Sam felt his gut slide, as the pilot of the Secretary’s Black Hawk increased speed and height. For a heated minute the helicopter raced along the Potomac before coming in to land on the secure helipad on top of the Pentagon.
As the rotor blades came to a dull whine the Secretary of Defense unclipped her harness and leaned toward the pilot. Her voice was loud and confident as she spoke, “Henriks! What do we know?”
The airman looked back at her, over his shoulder. “Not much I’m afraid, ma’am. Someone based on the east side of the Potomac fired a Stinger surface-to-air missile. It narrowly missed us, and took out our tailing helicopter from the 12th Aviation Battalion.”
“Any survivors?”
“Yes. According to reports. Several occupants have surfaced and climbed on board a deployed life raft.”
Her jaw set. “And the shooter or shooters?”
“At this time we believe there is only one. Teams are on the ground as we speak, attempting to locate.”
Sam stood up and stared out the side windows toward the Potomac. From his vantage point on top of the Pentagon, his eyes swept the river, making out the small yellow shape of a life raft. They were slowly paddling to the western side.
The pilot switched the engine off, its rotor blades turned quietly.
The silence was interrupted by the echoing sounds of loud gunshots, firing in a rapid staccato. Sam squinted, fixing his eyes on the survivors. The sound seemed to be coming from there.
Bullets raked the surface of the river directly in front of the life raft.
Congressmen, Congresswomen, and servicemen jumped back into the water.
The shots ceased.
Why had the sharp shooter stop firing?
One of the Congressmen immediately began swimming toward the western side of the river. He made it nearly fifteen feet before the gunman began firing his rifle once more.
Sam quickly picked up a pair of binoculars hanging on the inside of the helicopter – normally used for sightseeing VIPs on their flight over the Capitol. Adjusting the instrument for his vision, he studied the river.
The Heisenberg Legacy Page 7