by Bob Finley
Cochran considered the suggestion. "Not a bad idea, Terri, but until we have more substantive reason, I don't think I can justify pulling another boat off patrol. It's certainly something, though, that we might want to consider later. Thanks. Anyone else?" There were no other suggestions. "Alright, then. Thanks for your help. This'll probably turn out to be nothing at all, but I don't like surprises, as you all know. Have a good day. That's all." He reached over and pushed a button on the console in front of him and the screen went dark. Anticipating his next words, a steward set a cup of hot coffee beside him. He smiled and nodded his thanks.
"Probably a bunch of nonsense," he thought to himself as he leaned back and took a careful sip of the strong brew. But the uneasy feeling he had dodged his efforts to squash it. He took another sip and frowned, thinking dark thoughts of spies and traitors aboard a ‘civilian’ research submarine in the black depths far below him. "What's the world coming to?" A sailor nearby saw him slowly shake his head as he stared at the dark screen before him. But he knew just enough about any officer with that much scrambled egg on the brim of his hat to know when to be quiet.
Chapter 55
"Alright, George," the President said to the CIA chief. The strain he was under was evident and the softness of his voice indicated how tired he was. "What do we know?"
George Conrad quickly terminated a hushed conversation he was having with Secretary of State Carlyle. Neither of them looked especially happy. He cleared his throat and shuffled a stack of papers in front of him before looking up.
"Mr. President, we've covered a lot of ground in the twenty-odd hours since we last met. We've drawn on every resource available to us and tried to piece together as accurate a picture as possible, one that will hopefully allow us to make informed decisions."
"And..." the President prodded.
"Well, Sir, our assets on the ground were able to get within about six miles of Johannesburg before being turned back by airborne radiation readings...they were in a helicopter borrowed from one of the local mining concerns."
"That's not very close, is it?" Hardesty asked pointedly.
"Our man had a device with him to measure radiation, just to be sure. When it started singing, the pilot turned around. Wouldn't go any closer. He was a local, works for the mine. That's the best we could do there. Our man would have gone closer, was willing to, on foot if necessary. But he had no dosimeter on him to warn him how much of a hit he was taking, so I ordered him off. My decision, Sir."
President Hardesty considered that, nodded, and said, "It was the right decision. We don't want our people unnecessarily exposed if we can help it. What else?"
"We've had three satellite passes over the area. The one at night, of course, was limited to infrared. But the residual heat signature it picked up from what was apparently the point of detonation told us a lot about the probable size of the bomb...somewhere in the neighborhood of ten megatons, we think. The other two passes the bird made were in daylight...one just after sunrise and the other a little after two in the afternoon. The one at sunrise wasn't a lot of help because of the low angle of the shot, and because it was downwind. So most of the area we needed to see was obscured by smoke...a lot of smoke." He paused and, in the silence, his sigh was audible throughout the room. "The afternoon pass finally gave us quite a number of good shots. They've been computer enhanced and the magnification the satellites are capable of is astonishing, to say the least. With your permission, we'll view these now." The President nodded and they waited while the room was darkened.
A ten-by-ten foot image of Johannesburg appeared on the screen that had been electrically lowered from its slot in the ceiling against one wall. It was a stock footage shot of the busy South African metropolis.
"This is an aerial photo we dug up from the files. The reason we're using it is that it was taken from about the same angle as the ones from the afternoon satellite pass. You'll need to see this picture first in order to understand and orient yourselves to the sat shots that follow. Otherwise, they'd make no sense." The picture changed. There was a collective gasp from around the darkened room and exclamations of disbelief. Conrad raised his voice to be heard over the din. "In order to make sense of what you're seeing, I've prepared an overlay of the city made from the first aerial picture you saw." The transparency appeared on the screen. Buildings from the original picture now showed up in profile, along with streets, parks, railroads, and other recognizable features. It only emphasized the appalling extent of catastrophic destruction. Concentric circles had been superimposed, radiating out from a central point.
With a ruby laser pointer, Conrad put a red dot on the screen, in the center of the smallest circle. "We've identified this spot here," the pointer danced a small, nervous circle on the screen, "as the hypocenter."
"The what?" the President interrupted.
"The hypocenter. What used to be called ‘ground zero’...where the bomb probably was when it detonated. As you can see from the silhouette overlay, this," the red dot again danced erratically on the photo, "is where the rail yard used to be. This is where Jambou said the bomb was. It appears that the majority of downtown Johannesburg, out to about thirteen hundred feet in all directions from the hypocenter, has completely disappeared. It just doesn't exist anymore. There's hardly a stick left standing. And remember...this was an area where there used be modern, thirty to forty-story buildings. And ten to fifteen stories were common. Most of that's gone. Of course, because they were taller than a lot of structures behind them, they absorbed a lot of the force from the initial blast that would otherwise have resulted in far greater destruction. So, you've got a quarter-mile area in all directions from the bomb itself where there's hardly anything standing that's more than a few feet high. Then, from that half-mile wide hypocenter, the destruction grows less severe...if that word even has any meaning in this situation...up to a point that varies anywhere from two to two-and-a-half miles out, before a point is reached where there's little or no destruction. Part of the problem, of course, as far as destruction is concerned, is the vast areas that have been destroyed by fire. Some of the outlying areas sent in what little they had in firefighting equipment, but it wasn't much help. Mostly they tried to get as many people out as possible and let everything else burn. Of course, as in all violent disasters, whether natural or otherwise, there are areas of freak damage as well as miracles. The blast, following the paths of least resistance, radiated out from its source along streets, railway lines, rivers, any corridor cleared of obstacles. So, there was damage as far away as three miles from the point of explosion, while places less than a quarter-mile away were virtually undamaged. From the pattern of destruction that we've been able so far to verify from recon mosaics, we believe the bomb was where he said it was. And since only the person who put it there could have known where it was, it's our opinion that he is, in fact, the one who exploded the device. Or, at least, had it exploded. That has rather serious implications..." His voice trailed off and he let those who were in the room think that over for a moment before he went on.
"As you can see, the reality of such an explosion in a densely populated area such as Johannesburg is that the effects are devastating to a degree that is humanly difficult to comprehend. There is one positive note, however. It could have been worse." In the semi-darkened room, heads swiveled in his direction as if on a pre-arranged signal. "This was a ground burst, you see," he said quietly. "An air burst would have been worse. Much worse."
"How is that, Mr. Conrad?" the President voiced all their thoughts.
"In a ground burst, or so I'm told, Mr. President, structures like tall buildings and hills, things like that, dissipate and dilute the force of the blast. Like a hurricane that weakens when it makes landfall. But an air burst attacks from above, rather than through, such obstacles, so it covers more area and its effects are more widespread."
"Isn't that a rather moot point, Mr. Conrad," the voice of Secretary of State Travis Carlyle came from down the
table, "when we're already assuming people dying by the hundreds of thousands?" There was a rumble of assent from all around the room.
"Yes and no, Mr. Carlyle," Conrad shot back at him. "Whimpering bleeding heart!" he thought caustically. They'd already had this conversation just before the meeting. "Yes, if you consider that it's only another ten or twenty thousand more deaths out of an overall half-million or so when you compare what an air burst can do versus a ground burst. In that respect, it does seem we're splitting hairs, I suppose. No, however, if you're considering air versus ground bursts in the context of that number of extra lives lost multiplied by a factor of twelve or more! Then that ten to twenty thousand becomes up to a quarter of a million additional lives! And that, Mr. Carlyle, I consider to be a significant point to consider."
In the strained silence that followed, the President's calm voice was easily heard. "I'm afraid you've lost me, George. Of course that many lives are important to all of us. But what's your point?"
"I think, Sir," the voice of Admiral Lindy Thomas cut through the charged atmosphere, "that what Mr. Conrad is trying to lead us to see is that, if this Jambou character has another dozen or more nukes scattered around the world in major population centers, as he claims he does, then the fact that this bomb in Johannesburg was detonated at ground level suggests that he has no means of aerial delivery. If that's so, it limits to at least some extent, first, where we should concentrate our search for the other hidden devices...assuming he really has them...and, second, that our potential losses would be fewer than with air delivery, perhaps up to a quarter of a million fewer." Another wave of response swept the room.
"Thank you, Admiral Thomas," George Conrad said, his voice considerably more controlled than before his heated reaction to the Secretary of State. "That is precisely my point. It is, I admit, Mr. President, not the kind of progress we'd hope to make, but we do believe it is somewhat significant."
"George, I'll take every 'gimme' we can get at this point. What else have you got?"
"We've run out every lead we had on this person ‘Jambou’. There really isn't much to say. During the broadcast he made certain claims about family in South Africa and about injustices for which he's taking revenge. The diamonds referred to by his alleged hostage Marcus Justin could, it seems, have come from a particularly murderous and vicious robbery that took place several years ago. We just don't know. He seems to have come from out of nowhere, Sir, and dropped into our laps. The world's lap, as it were. If we're to believe this absurd claim he's making about establishing a so-called ‘country’, then we also have to accept his claim to have possession of nuclear devices and, until we know otherwise, consider his threat to use them a valid emergency. Someone certainly used one on Johannesburg. Whether he did so or someone acting for him on the scene did so, there has most certainly been a nuclear device exploded there."
"Could he have actually exploded a bomb like that from something so simple as a long-distance telephone call?" someone asked from across the table. Conrad couldn't identify the speaker.
"We're looking into that," he replied.
"So you don't know?" someone else joined in.
"We have a team of communications experts on that now," Conrad reiterated.
"What about this place, this seamount, this fellow claims to be on? Or in? What about that?"
"We have verified the existence of such a topographical feature off the Mediterranean coast. It has no significance from a shipping standpoint. It's too far out for local fishermen to bother with. It's just...there. I'm told there are thousands of them all over the world. It's just that this particular one is fairly close to shore and is only about a hundred feet underwater. Other than that, most people we talked to didn't even know it was there, much less that it had a name."
"Could somebody actually live inside this thing?"
"We've asked engineers from several prominent marine construction firms about that. The general consensus is that, with enough money and determination, it might be possible. The overriding question they've all asked is, ‘Why would anybody want to?’."
"What about these hostages?" President Hardesty asked, bringing the group back to the real issues.
"We have confirmation from...various sources, let's say...that three people from a civilian research submersible known as MARS III are considered to be missing, their whereabouts unknown. In addition, it is believed that five civilians, all crew members or passengers of a civilian charter submarine called the VIKING, operating out of Miami, undertook a rescue mission involving MARS III. We also know that, somewhere south of the Azores, the MARS vessel surfaced with one of the VIKING's passengers aboard. He put out an SOS and was rescued and taken in tow by a U. S. naval vessel that is escorting him and the ship back to safe harbor in the Azores, where it will be turned over to the owners. He...the passenger who brought MARS to the surface...told the commanding officer of the naval ship that rescued him that MARS had been attacked by terrorists, the crew kidnapped as hostages, and taken to some place called Centinela Seamount. He also said that the rest of the VIKING's passengers and its crew, one Captain Marcus Justin, had given chase, with this seamount as their destination. If all this is true, then in light of Captain Justin's participation in the television transmission just prior to the bomb in Johannesburg being detonated, it does seem that there may be as many as seven hostages presently being held by a terrorist who calls himself Jambou."
"What's the international take on all this, Wiley?" the President asked of his foreign affairs advisor.
"I believe, Mr. President, that you already know everything we know. But, for the sake of those here who haven't had the opportunity to be briefed as yet, let me say that we have been in touch with all of the governments whose cities have been named as having had nuclear bombs secreted there by these terrorists. They're all, of course, very much concerned, though I must say that there is a certain element of speculation as to whether it's really true or not, in spite of the incident in Johannesburg. I suspect there are those who don't enjoy admitting that their security would be so vulnerable." There was a grumble of empathy around the room. "There are, of course, the usual accusations, by the usual radical nations, that this is all a conspiracy on our part to achieve racial genocide against our black neighbors, and that we've been joined in this conspiracy by our allies because we've promised them that when we take over South Africa, under cover of a humanitarian airlift, we'll cut them in on the mineral rights that we acquire. The usual garbage. I think, as the whole concept of nuclear blackmail by telephone sinks in, most of the governments directly threatened will put aside lesser issues and seek a coalition with each other to confront this mutual problem. It's like having a hand grenade in your front pocket with a string tied to the pin and the other end of the string in some maniac's hands. Nobody can feel comfortable again until the threat is removed. And nobody wants to be the first one to find out whether it's all a bluff."
"Alright, thank you, Wiley. I have to admit that your graphic allusion to a hand grenade in the front pocket certainly puts the situation in perspective for me." There was laughter all around, the first opportunity there'd been to release some of the tension that blanketed the room. The President leaned back and took a tall glass of iced tea from the coaster on his desk. When the laughter and jokes died down, he brought the meeting back into focus.
"Let me see, now, if I have all of this straight in my simple man's mind." There were several ill-concealed smiles by those who remembered that line from one of his campaign speeches. "We know that there are at least three, maybe seven people missing. From an eye witness, we have reason to believe that some of them were kidnapped on the high seas by somebody...or bodies...we believe to be terrorists. The missing people are United States citizens and they were taken against their will in an illegal act in international waters. We have reason to believe that several more U. S. citizens who were attempting to rescue the original group have by now also been illegally taken as hostages by the same
terrorists, again in what, by current legal standards, are considered to be international waters. We know that a nuclear bomb has been exploded in an unsuspecting country with which, while we may not be allies, we at least have diplomatic ties. We have reason to believe that the perpetrator of this cowardly act of terrorism against a foreign nation is a self-proclaimed ‘king’ of a new country that nobody in the world has ever heard of, much less recognized as an entity. We also have reason to believe, from his own admission, that his primary motive was revenge against not only a private corporation, but against an entire generation of descendants of people whom he alleges wronged his ancestors. We have reason to believe, also from his own admission, that he is holding at least one U. S. citizen as hostage and has forced him to make televised statements on his behalf, very much like prisoners of war in Korea and Vietnam were forced to do. We have been told from this terrorist's own mouth that he has the capability and, most importantly, the will to detonate similar nuclear devices throughout heavily populated areas of the world, including our own country, unless we yield to his extortion demands. We don't know that for sure, but we don't want to be the ones who find out the hard way. Which, I'm sure, was at least partially what the Johannesburg demonstration was psychologically all about. How 'm I doing?" There were nods but no comments. "Very well, then. Let's bring up the lights." He leaned forward in his chair as the room brightened and his gaze fell collectively on the assembled group. "We can argue the fine points of this until we're blue in the face. But I only see two issues here. The first is, an international terrorist has us by the short n' curlies, which I don't like! The second is, what are we going do about it?" He looked around the group. "I think it's time we heard from General Artley." He leaned back and picked up his iced tea glass. There were whispered comments, some less subdued than others, but they died away when the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rose quietly from his place at the end of the table to address them. For the more astute, the fact that the President had referred to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as 'General' instead of 'Art' was a dead giveaway as to what course of action he thought should be taken.